Red Men and White. Wister Owen
and I suppose Jones’s friend is still expecting him in Tucson.
THE SERENADE AT SISKIYOU
Unskilled at murder and without training in running away, one of the two Healy boys had been caught with ease soon after their crime. What they had done may be best learned in the following extract from a certain official report:
“The stage was within five miles of its destination when it was confronted by the usual apparition of a masked man levelling a double-barrelled shot-gun at the driver, and the order to ‘Pull up, and throw out the express box.’ The driver promptly complied. Meanwhile the guard, Buck Montgomery, who occupied a seat inside, from which he caught a glimpse of what was going on, opened fire at the robber, who dropped to his knees at the first shot, but a moment later discharged both barrels of his gun at the stage. The driver dropped from his seat to the foot-board with five buckshot in his right leg near the knee, and two in his left leg; a passenger by his side also dropped with three or four buckshot in his legs. Before the guard could reload, two shots came from behind the bushes back of the exposed robber, and Buck fell to the bottom of the stage mortally wounded – shot through the back. The whole murderous sally occupied but a few seconds, and the order came to ‘Drive on.’ Officers and citizens quickly started in pursuit, and the next day one of the robbers, a well-known young man of that vicinity, son of a respectable farmer in Fresno County, was overtaken and arrested.”
Feeling had run high in the streets of Siskiyou when the prisoner was brought into town, and the wretch’s life had come near a violent end at the hands of the mob, for Buck Montgomery had many friends. But the steadier citizens preserved the peace, and the murderer was in the prison awaiting his trial by formal law. It was now some weeks since the tragedy, and Judge Campbell sat at breakfast reading his paper.
“Why, that is excellent!” he suddenly exclaimed.
“May I ask what is excellent, judge?” inquired his wife. She had a big nose.
“They’ve caught the other one, Amanda. Got him last evening in a restaurant at Woodland.” The judge read the paragraph to Mrs. Campbell, who listened severely. “And so,” he concluded, “when to-night’s train gets up, we’ll have them both safe in jail.”
Mrs. Campbell dallied over her eggs, shaking her head. Presently she sighed. But as Amanda often did this, her husband finished his own eggs and took some more. “Poor boy!” said the lady, pensively. “Only twenty-three last 12th of October. What a cruel fate!”
Now the judge supposed she referred to the murdered man. “Yes,” he said. “Vile. You’ve got him romantically young, my dear. I understood he was thirty-five.”
“I know his age perfectly, Judge Campbell. I made it my business to find out. And to think his brother might actually have been lynched!”
“I never knew that either. You seem to have found out all about the family, Amanda. What were they going to lynch the brother for?”
The ample lady folded her fat, middle-aged hands on the edge of the table, and eyed her husband with bland displeasure. “Judge Campbell!” she uttered, and her lips shut wide and firm. She would restrain herself, if possible.
“Well, my dear?”
“You ask me that. You pretend ignorance of that disgraceful scene. Who was it said to me right in the street that he disapproved of lynching? I ask you, judge, who was it right there at the jail – ”
“Oh!” said the enlightened judge.
“ – Right at the left-hand side of the door of the jail in this town of Siskiyou, who was it got that trembling boy safe inside from those yelling fiends and talked to the crowd on a barrel of number ten nails, and made those wicked men stop and go home?”
“Amanda, I believe I recognize myself.”
“I should think you did, Judge Campbell. And now they’ve caught the other one, and he’ll be up with the sheriff on to-night’s train, and I suppose they’ll lynch him now!”
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