"You as good as any other man, are you? Why there ain't a more miserable little skunk within twenty miles round Joliet."
Robinson was forgetting the etiquette of the West. No man--except, perhaps, in speaking to a nigger--ever assumed a tone of insolent superiority to any other man; if he did so, it was at the risk of sudden death; even a hired man was habitually treated with civility. The titles of colonel, judge, major, captain, and squire were in constant use both in public and private; there was plenty of humorous "chaff," but not insult. Colonels, judges, majors, captains, and squires were civil, both to each other and to the rest of the citizens. Robinson, in speaking to his fellow countryman, forgot for a moment that he was not in dear old England, where he could settle a little difference with his fists. But little Wilkins did not forget, and he was not the kind of man to be pounded with impunity. He had in his pocket a hunting knife, with which he could kill a hog--or a man. When Robinson called him a skunk he felt in his pocket for the knife, and put his thumb on the spring at the back of the buckhorn handle, playing with it gently. It was not a British Brummagem article, made for the foreign or colonial market, but a genuine weapon that could be relied on at a pinch.
"Oh, I dare say you were a great man at home, weren't you?" he said. "A lord maybe, or a landlord. But we don't have sich great men here, and I am as good a man as you any day, skunk though I be."
Robinson had just thrown another shovelful of charcoal into the furnace under his boiler, and he held up his shovel as if ready to strike Williams, but it was never known whether he really intended to strike or not.
The three other men standing near were quite amused with the dispute of the two Englishmen, and were smiling pleasantly at their foolishness. But little Wilkins did not smile, nor did he wait for the shovel to come down on his head; he darted under it with his open knife in the same manner as the Roman soldier went underneath the dense spears of the Pyrrhic phalanx, and set to work. Robinson tried to parry the blows with the handle of the shovel, but he made only a poor fight; the knife was driven to the hilt into his body seven times, then he threw down his shovel, and tried to save himself behind the boiler, but it was too late; the dispute about England and the States was settled.
Wilkins took his team home, then returned to Joliet and gave himself into the custody of the squire, Hoosier Smith. At the inquest he was committed to take his trial for murder, and did not get bail. His wife left the farm, and with her two little boys lived in an old log hut near the gaol. She brought with her two cows, which Wilkins milked each morning as soon as Silas let him out of prison. I could see him every day from the window of my room, and I often passed by the hut when he was doing chores, chopping wood, or fetching water, but I never spoke to him. He did not look happy or sociable, and I could not think of anything pleasant to say by way of making his acquaintance. After much observation and thought I came to the conclusion that Sheriff Cunningham wanted his prisoner to go away; he would not like to hang the man; the citizens would not take Wilkins off his hands; if two fools chose to get up a little difficulty and one was killed, it was their own look-out; and anyway they were only foreigners. The fact was Wilkins was waiting for someone to purchase his farm.
The court-house for Will County was within view of the gaol, at the other side of the street, and one day I went over to look at it. The judge was hearing a civil case, and I sat down to listen to the proceedings. A learned counsel was addressing the jury. He talked at great length in a nasal tone, slowly and deliberately; he had one foot on a form, one hand in a pocket of his pants, and the other hand rested gracefully on a volume of the statutes of the State of Illinois. He had much to say about various horses running on the prairie, and particularly about one animal which he called the "Skemelhorne horse." I tried to follow his argument, but the "Skemelhorne horse" was so mixed up with the other horses that I could not spot him.
Semicircular seats of unpainted pine for the accommodation of the public rose tier above tier, but most of them were empty. There were present several gentlemen of the legal profession, but they kept silence, and never interrupted the counsel's address. Nor did the judge utter a word; he sat at his desk sideways, with his boots resting on a chair. He wore neither wig nor gown, and had not even put on his Sunday go-to-meeting clothes. Neither had the lawyers. If there was a court crier or constable present he was indistinguishable from the rest of the audience.
Near the judge's desk there was a bucket of water and three tumblers on a small table. It was a hot day. The counsel paused in his speech, went to the table, and took a drink; a juryman left the box and drank. The judge also came down from his seat, dipped a tumbler in the bucket and quenched his thirst; one spectator after another went to the bucket. There was equality and fraternity in the court of law; the speech about the Skemelhorne horse went on with the utmost gravity and decorum, until the nasal drawl of the learned counsel put me to sleep.
On awakening, I went into another hall, in which dealings in real estate were registered. Shelves fixed against the walls held huge volumes lettered on the back. One of these volumes was on a table in the centre of the hall, and in it the registrar was copying a deed. Before him lay a pile of deeds with a lead weight on the top. A farmer came in with a paper, on which the registrar endorsed a number and placed at the bottom of the pile. There was no parchment used; each document was a half-sheet foolscap size, party printed and partly written. Another farmer came in, took up the pile and examined the numbers to see how soon his deed was likely to be copied, and if it was in its proper place according to the number endorsed. The registrar was not fenced off from the public by a wide counter; he was the servant of the citizens, and had to satisfy those who paid him for his labours. His pay was a fixed number of cents per folio, not dollars, nor pounds.