The whole place, of course, right away broke into yells and cusses, and everybody come a-crowding into a heap––some of the boys picking up Hart and carrying him, kicking feeble real natural, out into the kitchen; and some more grabbing a-hold of Shorty and taking away his gun. Kerosene let off howls fit to blow the roof off––only quieting down long enough to say she’d just agreed to take Hart for her second, and it was hard luck to be made a widow of twice in one day. Then she howled more. Really, things did go with a hum!
Santa Fé and the rest come a-trooping back from the kitchen––leaving the door just a crack open, so Hart could peep through and see the fun––and Santa Fé jumped up on a bench and sung out “Order!” as loud as he could yell. Knowing what was expected of ’em, the boys quieted down sudden; and the Hen got a-hold of Kerosene and snuggled her up to her, and told her to weep on her fond breast––and Kerosene started in weeping on the Hen’s fond breast all right, and left off her howls. The room was that quiet you could a-heard a cat purr.
“My brethren,” says Charley, talking sad-sounding 198 and digging away at his eyes with his pocket-handkerchief, “Brother Hart has left us”––Hart being in the kitchen that was dead true––“and for the third time to-day our Sunshine Club has suffered a fatal loss. Still more lamentable is the case of our doubly stricken sister Rebecca––only just recovered, by time’s healing touch, from the despair of her tragic widowhood, and at the threshold of a new glad life of wedded happiness––who again is desolately bereaved.” (Kerosene give a dreadful groan––seeming to feel something was expected of her––and then jammed back to the Hen’s fond breast again and kept on a-weeping like a pump.) “Our hearts are with Sister Rebecca in her woe,” says Charley. “She has all our sympathy, and the full help of our sustaining love.”
“If I know anything about the sense of this meeting,” Hill chipped in, “it’s going to do a damn sight more’n sling around sympathy.” (Hill had a way of speaking careless, but he didn’t mean no harm by it.) “That shooting wasn’t a square one,” says 199 Hill; “and it’s likely there’ll be another member missing from the Sunshine Club for doing it. There’s telegraph-poles,” says Hill, “right across the way!”
“Brother Hill is right,” Santa Fé went on, “though I am pained that his unhappy disposition to profanity remains uncurbed. The shot that has laid low Brother Hart was a foul one. Justice, my friends, exemplary justice, must be meted out to the one who laid and lowered him; and I reckon the quicker we get Brother Smith over to the deepo, and up on the usual telegraph-pole––as Brother Hill has suggested––the better it’ll be for the moral record of our town. All in favor of such action will please signify it by saying ‘Ay.’” And the whole crowd––except Shorty, who voted against it––yelled out “Ay” so loud it shook all the bottles in the bar.
“The ayes have it,” says Santa Fé, “and we will proceed. Brother Wood, as chairman of the Friendly Aid Society, I beg that you will go on ahead to the deepo and get ready the rope that on these occasions you 200 so obligingly lend us from the Company’s stores. Brother Jones and Brother Hill, you will kindly bring along the prisoner. The remaining Friendly Aiders present will have the goodness, at the appropriate moment, to render the assistance that they usually supply.” And off Charley went, right after Wood, with the rest of us following on: Hill and Denver yanking along Shorty and flourishing their guns savage; the girls in a pack around the Hen holding on to Kerosene; and Kerosene doing her share of what was wanted by letting out yells.
The little man was left to himself a-purpose; and he was so shook up, while he was coming along with the crowd over to the deepo, he couldn’t say a word. But he managed to get his stamps going, though they didn’t work well, when we was all on the platform––waiting while Wood rigged up the rope on the telegraph-pole––and he asked Santa Fé, speaking husky, what the boys meant to do.
“Justice!” says Charley, talking as dignified 201 as a just-swore-in sheriff. “As I explained to you this morning, sir, nobody in Palomitas ever stands in the way of a fair fight––like the one you happened to come in on at the finish a few hours ago––any more than good citizens, elsewhere and under different conditions, interfere with the processes of the courts. But when the fight is not fair, as in the present instance––the gravamen of the charge against Brother Smith being that he loosed off into Brother Hart’s back when the latter did not know it was coming and hadn’t his gun out––then the moral sense of our community crystallizes promptly into the punitive action that the case demands: as you will see for yourself, inside of the next ten minutes, when you see Brother Smith run up on that second telegraph-pole to the left and kicking his legs in the air until he kicks himself into Kingdom Come!”
“Good Heavens!” says the little man. “You’re not going to––to hang him?”