On the trial she sat in the court-room in a close-fitting dress, wearing a picture hat, and would give a dumb sort of gurgle when Scales would pitch into her case, as if to protest at being so cruelly assaulted while defenseless. It was pathetic.
Bob Fink shed tears, while he pictured to the jury in his opening, the agony of this beautiful girl set off from her kind for life, as the preponderance, the clear preponderance of the evidence showed she would be, by dumbness—"an affliction, gentlemen of the jury, which seals her lips forever as to the real facts, and stops the reply she could otherwise make to the dastardly attack of my honorable and learned friend, the attorney for this public-service corporation, which has been clothed with the power to take away your land, gentlemen of the jury, or mine, whether we want to sell it or not, and to rob us of our produce by its extortionate freight rates, and to run its trains into and through our cities, and over our busses, and to maim and injure our ladies, and bring them before juries of their peers, who, unless I mistake, will administer a stinging rebuke to this corporation without a soul to save or a body to kick, in the only way in which it can be made to feel a rebuke—in damages, out of that surplus of tainted dollars which its evil and illegal practices have wrung from the hard hands of toil as represented by the farmers and laborers who so largely compose this highly-intelligent jury."
"Good spiel," commented the Groom.
Bob was good until the other side had the reporter begin to take his speech down, so as to show appeals to passion and prejudice—and then he hugged the record close. The plaintiff sobbed convulsively. Bob stopped and swallowed, knowing that the reporter couldn't get the sobs and swallows into the record. The jurors blew their noses and glared at Scales and the claim-agent. I went over to the plaintiff and gave her a drink of water, and would have liked to take her in my arms and comfort her, but didn't.
"Too bad!" remarked the Poet.
Well, the jury found for us in about three hours for the full amount, ten thousand dollars and costs. They would have agreed earlier, only they waited so the state would have to pay for their suppers. A judgment was rendered on the verdict, and the railroad appealed. All this time Bob was getting more and more tender toward the plaintiff. I didn't think much about it until cards came for their wedding. I sent Bob an assignment of my share in the verdict for a wedding present—if we ever got it. Amelia promised to love, honor and cherish by nodding her head, and walked away from the altar with her most graceful physical culture gait, while the boys outside with their shivaree instruments ready for the evening, sang in unison, "Here comes the bride! Get on to her stride!" It was a recherché affair—but excessively quiet nuptials on the bride's side.
That evening Absalom Scales got in the finest piece of work that was ever pulled off in any lawsuit in Nebraska. The bridal party went away over the C. & S. W.Omaha Limited, and Amelia and Bob were there looking as fine as fiddles—Amelia a picture, they said, in her going-away gown. Scales had fixed up for a crowd of hoodlums to shivaree them as they went.
"Mighty mean trick, I should say," said the Hired Man, "for any one but a corporation lawyer."
"Wait, Brother Snoke," protested the Colonel, "until you are so far advised in the premises as to be able to judge whether the end didn't justify the means."
In addition to the horse-fiddles and bells and horns, Absalom had arranged some private theatricals. He had plugged up a deal by which Bill Williams, the bus man—who'd sold out and was going to Oregon anyway—came bursting into the waiting-room while they were waiting for the train—which was held at the water-tank by Scales' procurement and covin—and presented a bill for the damages to his bus by the accident which had hurt Amelia's oratorical powers. You see, he'd never been settled with, being clearly negligent. They tried to get off in Amelia's case on the doctrine of imputed negligence, but it wouldn't stick.