Judith of the Plains

by Marie Manning

It was dark in the valley, but the menacing stillness seemed to be lifting. The range-cattle had again taken up their plaint, the sounds of the desert night swept across the stony walls of the cañon. Alida knew that it must have happened at the dead cotton-woods. There were no other high trees about for miles. Again she listened before advancing. There was no sound of hoof or champing bit or men moving quickly. They had gone their way into the valley. She ran swiftly, her lantern throwing its beam across the scrubby inequalities of ground, but for her there was no need of its beacon. To-night she was beyond the halting, stumbling uncertainties of tread to which man is subject. There was magic in her feet and in her hands and brain. Like the wind she ran, the wind on the great plain where there are no foot-hills to hinder its course. The black, dead trees stood out distinctly against the starry sky, and from a cross-limb of one of them dangled something with head awry, like a broken jumping-jack, something that had once been a man—and her husband. She could touch the feet of this frightful thing and feel its human warmth. A wind came up from the desert and blew across the cañon’s rocky walls into the valley, and the parody of a man swayed to it.

She had been expecting this thing. For weeks the image of it had been graven on her heart. Sleeping or waking, she had seen nothing but his dangling body from the cross-limb. Yet with the actual consummation before her, she felt its hideous novelty as though it were unexpected. At sight of it the force that had borne her up through the happenings of that day went out of her, and as she stood with the knife and the rope, that she had brought in the hope of cheating the lynchers, dangling from her nerveless hand her helplessness overcame her. Again and again she called to the dead man for help, called to him as she had been accustomed to call when her woman’s strength had been unequal to some heavy household task.

Far down the trail she could hear the gallop of a horse coming closer, and mingled with the sounds of its flying feet was a voice urging the horse to greater speed in the shrill cabalistic “Hi-hi-hi-ki!” of the plains-man. What was it—one of them returning to see that she did not cheat the rope of its due?—to hang her beside him, as an after-thought, as they hanged Kate Watson beside her man? Let them. She was standing near the swaying thing when horse and rider gained the ground beside her, and what was left to her of consciousness made out that the rider was Judith. She pointed to it, and stood helpless with the dangling rope in her hand.

“Are we too late?” Judith almost whispered, as she caught Alida’s cold, inert hands. “I dreamed it all and came. If I could have dreamed it sooner!”

Alida did not seem to hear, neither could she speak. She only pointed again to the thing beside her.

Judith understood. The women had a task to share, and in silence they began it. The lynchers had done their work all too well. Again and again the women strove with all their strength to take down the dangling parody of a man, which in its dead-weight resistance seemed in league with the forces against them. At last the thing was done. Down to a pale world, that in the haggard gray of morning seemed to bear in its countenance something of the pinch of death, Judith lowered the thing that had so lately been a man. She cut the rope away from the neck, she straightened the wry neck that seemed to wag in pantomimic representation of the last word to the lynchers. They’d have to reckon with him on dark nights, and when the wind wailed like a famished wolf and when things not to be explained lurked in the shadows of the desert.

The morning stillness came flooding into the cup-shaped valley like a soft, resistless wave. Something had come to the gray, old earth—another day, with all its human gift of joy and woe, and the earth welcomed it though it had known so many. The sun burst through the gold-tipped aureole of cloud, scattering far and wide lavish promises of a perfect day. The earth seemed to respond with a thrill. No longer was the pinch of death in her countenance. The valley, the mountains, the invisible wind, even the dead cotton-woods, seemed endowed with throbbing life that contrasted fearsomely with the terrible nullity of this thing that once had been Jim Rodney.

Alida had ceased to take any part in the hideous drama. She sat on the ground, a crouching thing with glittering eyes. It was past comprehension that the sun could shine and the world go on with her man dead before her. Judith had become the force that planned and did to save the family pride. While her hands were busy with preparations for the dead, she rehearsed what she would say to this and that one to account for Jim’s absence. The silence of the men who had done this thing would be as steadfast as their own.

And there were the children. Through all her frantic search for things in the house, Judith remembered that she must step softly and not waken the children. With each turn of the screw, as her numbed consciousness rallied and responded afresh to the hideous realization of this thing, there came no release from the tyrannous hold of petty detail. She remembered that she must be back at noon to hold post-office, and there would be the endless comedy to be played once more with her cavaliers. They must never suspect from word or look of hers. And there was the dance to-night at the Benton ranch—she hid her face in her hands. Ah, no, she could not do this thing! And yet they must not suspect. She must contrive to give the impression that Jim had cheated the rope. Yes, she must go and dance, and, if need be, dance with his very murderers. Jim’s children were to have the “clean start” that he intended, and they would have to get it here. There was no money for an exodus and a beginning elsewhere.

Alida still crouched beside the long, even tarpaulin roll that Judith had prepared with hands that knew not what they did. But now Judith gently roused her and put in her hand a spade; already she herself had begun. But Alida stared at it dully, as if she did not understand. Then Judith pointed to something black that had begun to wheel in the sky, wheel, and with each circular swoop come closer to the roll of tarpaulin. Then Alida knew, and, taking the spade, she and Judith began to dig the grave.