King of Spades (33 page)

The red-bearded miner cried, “What the hell, judge, every man has a right to go to hell his own way. If that's what he wants, just give him a good drop and be done with it.”

Judge Todd stared across at the red-bearded miner for a while.

The black crowd breathed, and waited.

Magnus knew how the young desperado felt. He'd once gone down that same path himself, that day after the shooting in Sioux City when he'd awakened to dreary daylight with one shotgun pellet in his brain and another in his throat. He'd never in all his life felt so miserably low and so utterly alone. Thank God the pellet in his brain had pricked the balloon of madness in him. While the pellet in his throat had given him, willy-nilly, the voice of iron gravity. Magnus wept. Where was poor Roddy now? “We know he got
aboard the
St. Louis.
But when it docked in St. Lou, he wasn't aboard.”

Judge Todd finally nodded. “You may proceed with the examination, counsel.”

Maule swung in. “Your name?”

“Earl Ransom.”

“Age?”

“I don't know.”

“What?”

“I don't know.”

“You mean you don't know when you were born?”

“No, I don't.”

Maule threw a disbelieving look at Judge Todd. “Your Honor…. ”

Ransom continued. “I can't remember anything from the time when I was a boy. I guess I was hit on the head pretty hard once.”

“I see.” Maule combed his bald head with deft fingertips. “Then you don't know where you were born either?”

“No.”

The gruff voice behind Magnus said, “No wonder the kid always went around like a sleepwalker.”

The other heavy voice said, “I noticed that too.”

Maule gimped around on his stump. “Did you know your father?”

“No.”

“You didn't?”

“I've never even had a dream about a father.”

“But you have had a dream about a mother?”

“I think so.”

“Ah, then you did know your mother?”

Again Ransom tried to make room for his bearded chin inside the noose. “Say, judge, would you have the boys grease this noose a little? It tickles so.”

The red-bearded miner cried, “Good idea. The grease'll help for later on too.”

Once again embers sparked in the judge's eyes. “Hangman? You there, Troy Barb, remove the noose.”

Troy Barb's moon eyes opened in silvery glitter. “But, Your Honor, he'll escape. He's a dead shot.”

“Not without a gun he isn't. Besides, I hereby appoint you to stand guard with a loaded shotgun trained on him. And while we're at it, free his hands too. Never let it be said that we asked a prisoner to speak the truth with the sword of Damocles hung poised over his head.”

“I hears you.” Troy Barb climbed up and removed both the noose and the rope binding Ransom's wrists. Troy Barb next asked for and got a loaded shotgun. Troy Barb swung the gun on Ransom's chest. “The first time you even raises so much as a little finger, you will get a quart of buckshot up your gizzard.”

“Now, now,” Judge Todd growled, “just stand guard. We'll do all the hard talking.”

Ransom stroked his wrists to restore the circulation.

Black beards waited.

Judge Todd nodded down at Maule. “You may proceed.”

Maule repeated his question. “Then you did know your mother?”

“I can't say.”

A stone rattled down the side of Mt. Moriah.

Somebody called out, looking up, “What the hell you doin' up there, Larkin?”

“I prefers a high view of the operation.”

Maule pushed in. “What do you mean, you can't say? You just said you've had a dream about her.”

“Yes, I sometimes do dream about someone I think is my mother. But when I wake up, all memory of who this might be is gone.”

Magnus touched the ends of his white beard with quick ginger fingertips.

Maule leaned back and eyed Ransom sideways. “Well then, anyway, you are a resident of Deadwood, aren't you?”

“Yes”

“You lived as man and wife with the deceased?”

“Yes.”

“You had knowledge of her?”

Swifty, his eyes on Maule, swore under his breath. “Hey, you're off the scent, old man.”

Magnus whispered to himself, “Why, this boy doesn't have any friends at all.”

Maule continued. “Is it true that the deceased was in a family way?”

“So she said.”

“In other words, two souls went to their death when you pulled the trigger?”

“Yes.”

Swifty swore again. “Didn't I tell you? It's always threes with a woman.”

Maule gave a little leap. “Then you admit you killed both mother and child?”

“Yes.”

Swifty shook his head. “Man, man, the boy is on the steep downgrade now. Won't do him a particle of good to hit the brake block.”

“You did in fact shoot your wife and child?”

Ransom touched a hand to his right eye. “Yes.”

Maule turned to the crowd, a honeyed grin on his face. “Gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the prisoner confess the crime of double murder. You have seen for yourself that the prisoner has made no argument to save his life.” Then Maule's face abruptly blackened over with a look of doom. “Thus the state has no other choice but to ask for the death penalty. That the prisoner die on the gallows, hanged by the neck until dead.” Maule tolled his head, back and forth. “Ahh, so bad an ending argues a monstrous life. May the Lord preserve the soul of this man while we hang his body.” Maule turned toClemens with a short bow. “Your witness.” Maule stepped down.

Magnus shook his white head. What a pity. “I'd surely like to know the whole story behind this thing.”

A voice from a bunch of men sitting on the roof of a tin shop called out, “Get on with the hanging! We don't need any more fancy talk. Ain't he already admitted he's guilty?”

Another voice from the roof cried, “String him up! Let's go. We got gold to dig.”

Still another voice called, “Seeing as how he don't like ticklish ropes none, what we ought to do is to tickle the son of a bitch to death instead.”

“Yeh, it's a damned shame we're only going to hang him. I say, let's bum him to boot.”

“By God, I agree. I'd go get the kindling myself even if it was three miles away.”

But not all on the roof of the tin shop agreed. A shorty miner called out, “Give the man a fair shake, I says.”

Instantly a fist fight broke out on the roof.

Judge Todd placed his hand on his gun where it lay on his top hat. He glared over at the fight. “Hey, you, there. You boys stay cool now. Remember, God didn't give you hands so that you could go around tearing each other's eyes out.”

The fighters gradually quieted on the roof.

A black-bearded miner behind Magnus spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Think the judge can stop a real mob, if it comes to that?”

“Well, I should hope to smile he can stop a mob.”

“You know, I notices that even the dogs has shut up, it's such a calamity.”

“I've noticed that too.”

“What I'm worried about is, maybe the kid might just make a break for it somewhere along here.”

“Nah, not with old Troy Barb on the shotgun.”

“Man, I'm not so sure.”

“Nah, there'll be no evaporation here. Nothing like Elijah done anyway.”

Just then the roof of the tin shop collapsed with a roar and
a great crash. There was a hurtling explosion of dust, followed by a wild hullabaloo of cursing and groaning.

All eyes swiveled to the sudden gap in the crowd. For a few moments all sounds vanished as if sucked down a sink trap.

“Everybody all right there?” Judge Todd called out.

A dozen heads emerged from the wreckage. “Get on with the trial, judge. Tom Smith never did know how to build a roof.”

Judge Todd smiled acidly. “Tom Smith hardly built it for a grandstand.”

“Well, now, judge, suppose it was winter, and we was all wet snow, six feet deep?”

There was an opening laugh all around.

Judge Todd turned to Clemens. “Proceed with the witness, counsel.”

Magnus shook his white head some more. “Let's hope the boy had a good reason for what he did.”

Again Ransom touched a hand to his right eye.

Magnus started. “I'll be damned if that boy didn't look like he was fixing a monocle in place.”

Clemens climbed up on the stump vacated by Maule. Clemens was a pink man after a summer in the sun. He had more the look of a beloved pastor than a lawyer. He had a way of looking at a man with his gentle blue eyes that not even the most hard-bitten could hold up to.

Clemens surveyed the crowd. His white fingers played with a watch chain. “Your Honor, if it please the court, before I begin my examination, I'd like to make a few introductory remarks.”

“Hold on. What will be the purpose of these remarks?”

“To lay the proper foundation for the questioning.”

“Ah. You may proceed. Though the court reserves the right to interrupt the remarks if counsel strays afield.”

Clemens nodded. He studied the crowd some more. “Friends. Fellow miners.” Clemens paused. He paused so
long it hurt. “There isn't a man here in Deadwood but what he hasn't run away from something back in the States.” A trace of a smile touched the corners of his lips. “Now I like to think that that's mostly because there's still a streak of the glorious rebel left in us.”

“Yes,” Magnus thought, “yes, and I should have been hung for what I did back in the States.”

“We're different out here,” Clemens continued. “We not only tend to be more gloriously rebellious, but, as I think, more courteous.”

“And if I didn't hang for what I did back in the States,” Magnus thought, “surely they shouldn't hang this fine specimen of manhood for what he did out here in Deadwood. If there be any justice at all.”

“Actually, rebellion and courtesy go together. Each one of us has his peculiar past and so we're not inclined to stick our noses into each other's affairs. The height of discourtesy out here is for a man to ask another where he came from. To ask that is to put oneself down as a fool.”

Judge Todd and Maule listened very closely.

“And, in turn, courtesy fosters the free man. We all know that when we are in the presence of courteous people we feel free to be ourselves.”

“This fellow Clemens means well,” Magnus thought, “but all his sweet talk isn't going to help the kid much, if I know people at all.”

“We are also different here in the West because we need each other more. Because nature is more treacherous out here. Because it is harder to scratch out a living out here. Because we live farther apart from each other and are more lonesome than usual. Thus, the loss of one good man can be a catastrophe.” Clemens paused for emphasis. “So, for all our carrying of guns, we tend to be more sparing of life. We use our guns, yes, and on each other sometimes, yes, but we use them somewhat as nature uses the wolf to eliminate the weak
and the old, so that only the healthy and the strong perpetuate the race.”

From out of nowhere a pair of blue swallows suddenly appeared. The blue swallows dove through the gap in the crowd where the tin shop had collapsed, then circled high overhead. Their flight was erratic, frantic, as if they had lost something priceless.

Ransom turned his head to watch them.

Clemens also eyed the swallows for a moment.

The shorty miner who had put in a word for Ransom before the tin shop had collapsed abruptly showed up beside Troy Barb. The shorty miner touched Troy Barb on the shoulder. “Troy, let me ask you something. Wasn't you onc partners with the kid?”

Troy Barb let his moon eyes stray away from Ransom for a second. “Yeh, I was.”

“And didn't you share the same cabin with him?”

“What about it?”

“And didn't he give you half of his strike?”

“Yeh, he did.”

“A little bit ago, when you put that noose around his neck, didn't you feel for him? A little bit?”

“Yeh, I felt for him all right. I felt for his left ear.” Troy Barb cackled at what he thought was a pretty good crack.

“Here, here,” Judge Todd snapped. “Order in the court. You there, back away now.”

The shorty miner obeyed.

Clemens picked up the thread of his thought again. “Now this is pretty strong talk for one who was once a preacher in Philadelphia, and who is at the moment an armed lawyer in Deadwood. But this is what I've come to at last.”

“This fellow Clemens can't hold the crowd,” Magnus thought. “Somebody else is going to have to step in and do something if the kid is to have a chance.”

“My friend Carleton Ames”—Clemens paused to look at where Ames stood scribbling—“put it very well the other
night when he said, referring to our local miners, ‘Look at them. A bunch of virile characters. Proud. Fearless. And what dignity, what patience, in their faces. No complaints. If things aren't any better today, it's because they can't be any better. No blame on anyone.' ”

Ames couldn't help but beam a little.

“Perhaps our young friend Earl Ransom here has failed in this courtesy I spoke of. Perhaps he has failed in pride. Perhaps he has failed in patience. In any case, he has killed a woman purported to be his wife, and in your eyes he is now It.”

Once more Ransom touched a hand to his right eye.

“I'll be hanged,” Magnus exclaimed under his breath, “but that boy did make a gesture as if he were fixing a monocle in place.”

“Some of you may wonder why anyone should stand up for a prisoner who has already freely admitted his guilt. Well, let me assure you that I am not here to help free the guilty at the expense of the guiltless. Not at all. But I am here to make sure that any punishment we impose on the guilty shall be a just one. Because if the sentence we finally do impose on this man is a just one, we are that much the more courteous ourselves. And patient. And free. Even if the accused cannot be those things, we should be.”