After Judge Harlin went away Mead sat on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and his broad shoulders rounded into an attitude of deep dejection.
“What is the use?” his thoughts ran. “They are bound to get me sooner or later, and it might just as well be now as any time. It won’t make any difference whether they clear me or convict me. She will believe me guilty anyway, because her father and all her friends will say so.” He rose and began pacing the room and his thoughts turned persistently to Marguerite Delarue. Since he had heard the rumor of her approaching marriage to Wellesly he had tried not to let his thoughts rest upon her, but sometimes the rush of his scanty memories would not be forbidden.
Again he recalled the day when he first saw her, as she stood with her sick baby brother in her arms. She was so young, so blooming, so fair, that her anxious face and troubled eyes seemed all the more appealing. He remembered that he had looked at her a moment before he could speak, and in that moment love smote his heart. He had wished to see her father and she had laid the sick child on a couch while she left the room. The little one had fretted and he had sat down beside it and shown it his watch and his revolver, and it had put out its hands to him, and when Marguerite came back she had found the big, tall, broad-shouldered man cradling the sick child in his arms. He halted in his moody pacing of the cell and a sudden, shivering thrill shot through his whole big body as he saw again the look of pleasure and of trustful admiration which had lighted her face and shone in her dark blue eyes. The child had clung to him and, pleased, he had asked if he might not take it in his arms for a short ride on his horse. And after that, whenever he had passed the Delarue house alone, he had tried to see the little boy, and had tried still more, in roundabout ways, to bring the child’s sister outside the house, where he might see her and hear her voice. Four times he had done that, and once he had seen her in her father’s store and had held a few minutes’ conversation with her. He remembered every word she had said. He repeated them all to himself, and went over again every least incident of the times he had stopped his horse at her gate and had taken the laughing child from her arms and they had looked at each other and he had tried to say something—anything, and then had ridden away.
When the meager little memories were all done he sat down on his bed again and felt that nothing mattered, since she was to marry Albert Wellesly and would surely believe him guilty of all that was charged against him. He felt no jealousy of her chosen husband, and no anger toward Wellesly because he had won her. He was conscious only of a vague wonder that any man had dared ask Marguerite Delarue to be his wife.
On Saturday of the first week in October Judge Harlin received a private dispatch from Santa Fe saying that the supreme court had decided the shrievalty contest in favor of Joe Davis, the Democratic candidate. At once the threatened storm began to break. By noon Main street was again divided into two opposing camps. Every rifle, revolver and shot-gun in the town that was not carried on some man’s person was put within easy reach of ready hands. Shops and offices, stores and gardens were deserted, and men hurried to the center of the town, where they drifted along the sidewalk or stood in doorways in excited groups, each side anxiously and angrily on the alert for some open act of hostility from the other. The Republicans said they had not received official notice of the decision of the court, and that they would not surrender the office until it should reach them. The Democrats demanded that it be given up at once and accused the other side of secreting the court order with the intention of holding the office through Emerson Mead’s trial. The district court was to convene at Las Plumas on the following Monday. Mead’s case was the first on the docket.
Men who were next door neighbors, or friends of long standing, passed each other with scowls or averted faces, if they were members of the opposing parties. Mrs. John Daniels was planning to give a swell breakfast to a dozen chosen friends early the next week, the first appearance of that form of entertainment in Las Plumas society, and she was delightedly pluming herself over the talk the function would be sure to create and the envious admiration her friends would feel because she had introduced something new. She had talked the matter over with her dearest friend, Mrs. Judge Harlin, whom she had sworn to secrecy, and she was on her way to the post-office to mail her invitations when she saw that the threatened storm was breaking. Her glance swept up Main street on one side and down on the other, and she turned about and hurried home to substitute in her list of guests for those whose sympathies were Democratic, others whose masculine affiliations were Republican.
Hurried messages were sent out to mines and cattle ranches, and in the afternoon fighting men of both parties began to come in from the country. A procession of horsemen poured into the town, bronzed and grim-faced men, each with a roll of blankets behind him, a revolver at his side, a rifle swung to his saddle, or a shot-gun across its pommel. They loped about the town, sometimes surrounding the court-house, angrily discussing whether or not the clerk of the court was probably hiding the official order, and sometimes lining the two sides of Main street, as if they were two opposing companies of cavalry ready to join battle. Among the Republican forces Judge Harlin saw a red-whiskered Mexican who, he learned, was Antone Colorow. The man’s broken wrists had healed, but they had lost all their suppleness, and he could never throw the lariat again. He could shoot as well as ever though, and not a day had passed since that morning at the round-up when he had not sworn to himself that Emerson Mead should die by his hand. He hated Mead with all the vengefulness and fierceness of his race. His mind held but one idea, to work upon the man who had ruined his occupation the crudest possible revenge, in whatever way he could compass it. He had allied himself with the Republican forces only because they were opposed to his enemy, and he hoped that in the impending clash he would find opportunity to carry out his purpose.