Louisiana Lou / A Western Story

by William West Winter

Here, in America, she might have a chance. He could see to it that she did have a chance. With those eyes and that hair and her voice, the stage would open its arms to her, and acting was a recognized and respectable profession. There might be other opportunities, also.

But the vendetta she would have to drop. In the Basses Pyrénées one might devote a life to hunting vengeance, but it wouldn’t do in the United States. If she found the man, by some freak of chance, what would she do with him? To expect to convict him after all these years was ridiculous, and it was not likely that he would confess. Though she might be certain, the only thing left to her would be the taking of the law into her own hands; and that would not do. He did not doubt her ability or her willingness to kill the man. He knew that she would do it, and he knew that she must not be allowed to do it. He shuddered to think of her imprisoned in some penitentiary, her bright hair cropped and those fathomless eyes looking out on the sun through stone 143 walls and barred windows; her delicate body clothed in rough, shapeless prison garments. If there was to be any killing, she must not do it.

She would insist on vengeance! Very well, he had promised to serve her; he had no particular object in life; he was abundantly able to kill; he would do her killing for her.

Having settled this to his satisfaction and feeling a certain complacent pleasure in the thought that, if the impossible happened, he could redeem himself in her eyes by an act that would condemn him in the eyes of every one else, he lay down on his bunk and went to sleep again.

In the morning he was aroused by the turnkey and brought out of his cell. A couple of officers took charge of him and led him from the jail to the street, across it and down a little way to the criminal court building. Here he was taken into a large room just off the courtroom, to await his preliminary hearing.

The rest was almost ridiculously simple. He had had no plan, beyond a vague one of breaking from his guardians when he was led back to the jail. But he formed a new one almost as soon as he had seated himself in the room where the prisoners were gathered.

He was placed on a long bench, the end of which was near a door leading to the corridor of the building. A door opposite led into the dock. A number 144 of prisoners were seated there and two men in uniform formed a guard. One of them spent practically all his time glancing through the door, which he held on a crack, into the courtroom.

The other was neither alert nor interested. The officer who had brought De Launay, and who, presumably, was to make the charge against him, remained, while his companion departed.

Among those gathered in the room were several relatives or friends of prisoners, lawyers, and bondsmen, who went from one to another, whispering their plans and proposals. One, a bulbous-nosed, greasy individual, sidled up to him and suggested that he could furnish bail, for a consideration.

De Launay’s immediate guard, at this moment, said something to the uniformed policeman who sat near the center of the room. The other glanced perfunctorily in De Launay’s direction and nodded, and the man stepped out into the hall.