The Under Dog

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

I had begun my inventory at his feet as he stood gazing sullenly at us, his great red hands tightly clasped around the bars. When in my inspection I passed from his open collar up his tree-trunk of a throat to his chin, and then to his face, half-shaded by a big slouch hat, which rested on his flaring ears, and at last looked into his eyes, a slight shock of surprise went through me. I had been examining this wild beast with my judgment already warped by the Warden; that's why I began at his feet and worked up. If I had started in on an unknown subject, prepared to rely entirely upon my own judgment, I would have begun at his eyes and worked down. My shock of surprise was the result of this upward process of inspection. An awakening of this kind, the awakening to an injustice done a man we have half-understood, often comes after years of such prejudice and misunderstanding. With me this awakening came with my first glimpse of his eyes.

There was nothing of the Warden's estimate in these eyes; nothing of cruelty nor deceit nor greed. Those I looked into were a light blue—a washed-out china blue; eyes that shone out of a good heart rather than out of a bad brain; not very deep eyes; not very expressive eyes; dull, perhaps, but kindly. The features were none the less attractive; the mouth was large, well-shaped, and filled with big white teeth, not one missing; the nose straight, with wide, well-turned nostrils; the brow low, but not cunning nor revengeful; the chin strong and well-modelled, the cheeks full and of good color. A boy of twenty I should have said—perhaps twenty-five; abnormally strong, a big animal with small brain-power, perfect digestion, and with every function of his body working like a clock. Photograph his head and come upon it suddenly in a collection of others, and you would have said: "A big country bumpkin who ploughs all day and milks the cows at night." He might be the bloodthirsty ruffian, the human wild beast, the Warden had described, but he certainly did not look it. I would like to have had just such a man on any one of my gangs with old Captain Joe over him. He would have fought the sea with the best of them and made the work of the surf-men twice as easy if he had taken a hand at the watch-tackles.

I turned to the Warden again. My own summing up differed materially from his estimate, but I did not thrust mine upon him. He had had, of course, a much wider experience among criminals—I, in fact, had had none at all—and could not be deceived by outward appearances.

"You say they are going to try him to-day?" I asked.

"Yes, at two o'clock. Nearly that now," and he glanced at his watch. "All the witnesses are down, I hear. They claim there's something else mixed up in it besides robbing the mail, but I don't remember what. So many of these cases comin' and goin' all the time! His old father was in to see him yesterday, and a girl. Some o' the men said she was his sweetheart, but he don't look like that kind. You oughter seen his father, though. Greatest jay you ever see. Looked like a fly-up-the-creek. Girl warn't much better lookin'. They make 'em out o' brick-clay and ham fat up in them mountains. Ain't human, half on 'em. Better go over and see the trial."

I waited in the Warden's office until the deputies came for the prisoner. When they had formed in line on the sidewalk I followed behind the posse, crossing the street with them to the Court-house. The prisoner walked ahead, handcuffed to a deputy who was a head shorter than he and half his size. A second officer walked behind; I kept close to this rear deputy and could see every movement he made. I noticed that his fingers never left his hip pocket and that his eye never wavered from the slouch hat on the prisoner's head. He evidently intended to take no chances with a man who could have made mince-meat of both of them had his hands been free.

We parted at the main entrance, the prisoner, with head erect and a certain fearless, uncowed look on his boyish face, preceding the deputies down a short flight of stone steps, closely followed by the officer.

The trial, I could see, had evidently excited unusual interest. When I mounted the main flight to the corridor opening into the trial chamber and entered the great hallway, it was crowded with mountaineers—wild, shaggy, unkempt-looking fellows, most of them. All were dressed in the garb of their locality: coarse, rawhide shoes, deerskin waistcoats, rough, butternut-dyed trousers and coats, and a coon-skin or army slouch hat worn over one eye. Many of them had their saddle-bags with them. There being no benches, those who were not standing were squatting on their haunches, their shoulders against the bare wall. Others were huddled close to the radiators. The smell of escaping steam from these radiators, mingling with the fumes of tobacco and the effluvia from so many closely packed human bodies, made the air stifling.

I edged my way through the crowd and pushed through the court-room door. The Judge was just taking his seat—a dull, heavy-looking man with a bald head, a pair of flabby, clean-shaven cheeks, and two small eyes that looked from under white eyebrows. Half-way up his forehead rested a pair of gold spectacles. The jury had evidently been out for luncheon, for they were picking their teeth and settling themselves comfortably in their chairs.

The court-room—a new one—outraged, as usual, in its construction every known law of proportion, the ceiling being twice too high for the walls, and the big, uncurtained windows (they were all on one side) letting in a glare of light that made silhouettes of every object seen against it. Only by the closest attention could one hear or see in a room like this.