West Wind Drift

by George Barr McCutcheon

On Easter Sunday he stood guard over Pedro's cabin while that worthy and his family went to the “Tabernacle” to attend the special services. Two of the nurses were inside with the girl, but outside sat Manuel, a grim watch-dog that growled when any one approached.

The horror of that black night and the days that witnessed the wiping out of Sancho Mendez and Dominic hung like a pall over the camp. Both executions had been witnessed by practically all of the inhabitants. Captain Trigger came ashore.

With set, relentless faces the people watched two men go to their doom. The women were as stony-faced, as repressed, as the men. Save for the involuntary groans, and the queer hissing sound of long-pent breath as the black-capped figures swung off into space, the tremulous hush of intense restraint rested upon the staring crowd.

Twice they came out to see men they had known and respected “hanged by the neck until dead,” and on neither occasion was there the slightest manifestation of pity, nor was there a single word of gloating. They watched and then they went away, leaving the victims to be disposed of by the men selected for the purpose. No shouts, no execrations, no hysterical cries or sobs,—nothing save the grim silence of awe. For these people, even to the tiniest child, had ceased to live in the light of other days.

Peter Snipe, in his journal, wrote of that silent, subdued throng as other historians have written of the rock-hearted people of Salem, and of the soulful Puritans who grew heartless in the service of the Lord.

They stood afar-off and watched the small detachment of sailors carry the bodies down to the basin, and every one knew that Sancho Mendez and Dominic, heavily weighted, were rowed out to the middle and dumped into a bottomless grave. Some there were who declared that their bodies would sink for ages before reaching the bottom,—and no one thought of Sancho Mendez and Dominic without picturing them as gliding deeper and deeper into the endless abyss of water.

Michael Malone's speech to the multitude on the shorn edge of the wheat field was brief. He spoke from the scaffold on which Sancho Mendez, the blacksmith, sat with a noose around his neck.

“This man has been fairly tried and he is being fairly punished. There is no way to circumvent the laws of God or the laws of man on this island, my friends. The guilty cannot escape. If we transgress the law, we must pay in proportion to our transgression. This man is to die. The laws of our homeland would not have demanded the life of such as he,—but they should, my friends, they should. This island is small. It will be easy for us to keep it clean,—and we must keep it clean. We must not live in fear of each other. The lion and the lamb lie down together here; the thief and the honest man walk hand in hand. Our sins will find us out. We cannot hide them. Remember that. In this little land of ours there is nothing to stand in the way of the soundest principle ever laid down for man. 'Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you.' That is the Golden Rule. All we have to do is to observe that rule and there will be no use for the Ten Commandments, nor the laws of Moses, nor all the laws that man has made. We don't even have to be Christians. 'Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you.' That, my friends, is the law of laws. It is the religion of religions.”

“Soapy” Shay, sitting before the fire in his cabin a few nights after the executions, held forth at some length and with peculiar emphasis on what he called an exploded theory.

“As I said before, and as I've always said,—not being a drinking man myself,—it's all bunk about booze being responsible for all the crimes that are committed. Now here were these two guys, Sancho and Dominic. Look at what they did,—and they hadn't touched a drop for months. I'm not saying that licker is a soothin' syrup for a man's morals, but what I am saying is that if a feller has got it in him to be ornery, he'll be ornery, drunk or sober. I was tellin' Parson Mackenzie only this morning that him and me both have good reason for not touchin' the stuff,—for different reasons, of course,—but I didn't see why other people oughtn't to have it if they want it.