King of Spades (35 page)

The two blue shadows still dove around the gallows, searching frantically.

Magnus girded himself up to give it one more try. He cried as a tyrant might. “What the hell is my son doing in my bed!”

A haze spread over Ransom's green eyes. “Oh, what was your name in the States? Was it Rodman or Ransom or Bates? Did you murder your wife and fly for your life? Say, what was your name in the States?”

Magnus' voice was hoarse with brutal punch. “Damnation, woman, don't you know I don't hold with sons sleeping with their mothers?”

Ransom's eyes almost closed over. “Kind friends, you must listen to my sad story. I'm an object of pity. I'm looking quite hairy. I gave up my trade freighting King's Patent Pills to go looking for gold in the dreary Black Hills.”

One of the frantic swallows sailed under the judge's chin. On the next pass the judge made a snatch at it with his hand and almost caught it. At that the two mad swallows soared aloft with weeping cries.

Ransom's eyes closed. “Don't go away. Stay at home if you can. Stay away from that city they call Old Cheyenne. Through rain, cold, and snow, frozen clean through to the gills, they call me the orphan of the dreary Black Hills.”

A wide blue shadow appeared at the roots of the crowd.

Ransom's eyes drifted under closed lids. “We'll build a sweet little nest far out in the West and let the rest of the world go by.”

Magnus took hold of the salt barrel Ransom stood on with
both hands and gave it a shake. “Goddammit, wake the boy up and chase him back to his own bed.”

Ransom frowned profoundly. “All this racket waking me up.”

Magnus' eyes became circles of white with dots of black, full of yearning magnetism. “There you go, Roddy. A little more and you've got it.”

“When I already should be dead.”

“Roddy!” Magnus cried. “Roddy, Roddy.”

Ransom spoke as if from a great distance. “I'm ready if you are, judge.”

At last, seeing he was getting nowhere, a great sigh escaping him, Magnus let his shoulders drop. “Your Honor, it's no use. It didn't work.” Magnus tolled his white head. “It's like singing psalms to a dead horse.” Magnus let go of the salt barrel. “I'm sorry I took up so much of the court's time.”

Judge Todd looked kindly upon Magnus. “What was that all about?”

“It's no use, Your Honor.”

“The court found it instructive.”

“The court did?”

“Are you positive that this man is your son?”

“Yes.”

“How positive?”

“As sure as I am of myself standing here. My blood tells me so. My conscience shouts to me that it is so.”

“Hmm.”

“A King is about to be hung here.”

“You are absolutely sure that you have identified him to your own satisfaction?”

“Yes. The green eyes. That look of a little boy about to jump off a tree limb onto a sack swing, of here goes nothing. That little gesture of his where he seems to be fixing a monocle to his eye.”

“Monocle, eh?”

“Yes. I taught him that. Just as my poor dead mother taught me. She was the daughter of an old earl in England and she knew.”

The late-aftemoon shadow became a deep pool all through the gulch, whelming up to the top of the salt barrel, engulfing Magnus up to the hips.

Judge Todd leaned forward. “Then this boy is of good blood.”

“If you can call it that. With both of us having murder in our hearts.”

“Hmm.”

“Actually, if this young man is my son Roddy, I'm really the murderer. Not him. Because I'm the one that bent him.”

“Explain that.”

Magnus' white lips quivered in his white beard. “I once went off my rocker too. Mentally. Went berserk. In Sioux City. I accused my wife of infidelity. When she probably wasn't guilty at all. I finally shot her. And I in turn was shot down by my son. And he did it on my instructions. Because I'd taught him to shoot anybody that might be bothering her. Even if it was me.”

“Even if it was you?”

“Yes.”

“My God.”

“Yes. Luckily neither my wife nor I died. But by the time I'd recovered from my wounds, my wife had disappeared. I later found out that an Indian friend of hers, Gooseberry June, had spirited her away. I never found her.”

“And the boy?”

“He disappeared too. And ever since I've been looking for him. Because, among other things, I wanted to tell him that everything was all right. Not just forgiven, but all right. That I didn't kill his mother after all and that he didn't kill me either.”

Judge Todd studied to himself for a while. “Well now,
what I don't quite understand is this: if this boy really is your boy, why is it then that he pretends not to know you?”

“I don't think he's pretending. Not necessarily, anyway. He may have lost his memory. Amnesia. You must remember that he went through an awful thing back there as a boy. And the human mind can take about only so much and then it tends to blot out what it can't handle. I know that I would have gone out of my mind if it had happened to me. In fact, I went off my rocker on a lesser thing.”

“Hmm.”

“It's a case of where the mind itself decides to save you by the grace of silence.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Well, perhaps it's just as well that he doesn't know. Because suppose I did convince him, awaken his memory, that he is my son, Roddy King, what good would that do?” Magnus threw up his hands. “You'd hang him anyway, wouldn't you?”

Judge Todd brooded to himself.

Magnus wept. He tugged with little jerks at his white beard. “But, oh! I so wanted to tell him that it was me who did the wrong, not he. That I was the jealous one, of my wife's love for him and of his love for her. As so often happens between father and son and mother. When a son gets over into a father's territory, you know, sits in his armchair at the head of the table sometimes, there's bound to be a clash someday.”

“Were you arrested for trying to kill your wife?”

“I should have been. But I wasn't. She didn't sign a complaint. Nor did the law. I suppose the authorities figured I'd suffered enough and so didn't bother me. It took me a long while to heal. My face was all shot up. Truth to tell, there couldn't have been a better justice. For eleven years now I've not had one happy day. Not one happy day, ever. No love at all.” Magnus blinked his black eyes shut against the pain of it. “Oh! how I wanted to tell my son that he
never did have a debt of blood against me. Nor I against his mother.”

“Hmm.”

“You wouldn't let me be hanged in his place, would you, as the one who really was the guilty one in this matter?”

Judge Todd was shaken.

“Foolish question.”

Judge Todd shook his haggard face to clear it. “Perhaps we should all pray to God for divine guidance in this matter.”

Magnus slowly shook his head. “I'm afraid religion has long ago played out for me.”

“It has?”

“Morality, no. Christ as my Saviour, yes.”

Judge Todd stared down at Magnus. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Would you say you're fully recovered? Sane again?”

“Yes. I think so.” Magnus coughed a sad little laugh. “For one thing, that pellet in my throat made me slow to speak. And if that wasn't enough, that pellet in my brain finally put some sense in my head. Some lead in my mental feet, you might say.”

Maule's face had built up into a vast sneer at all this, and he at last broke in. “Your Honor. Hasn't this just about gone far enough? We might be tempted to show some mercy for this poor lad on the basis of what we have just heard. But the truth is, and the fact is, that in killing his wife he also killed a mother. Now I submit, sir, that that just makes it a little too thick to take.”

“By the Lord,” Magnus exclaimed, remembering. “That's right, I almost forgot. Reference was made earlier to the fact that he'd killed a woman who was about to bear him a son, wasn't there?” Magnus took a step toward Maule. “Wasn't there?”

“Yes. She was in a family way.”

“She was! Well.” Magnus snapped even more erect. “How long has she been dead?”

“Since early this morning.”

Magnus turned to the judge. “It's probably already too late … the Lord only knows how far she was along … but, Your Honor, may I view the body?”

“There she lies, corpus delicti.”

“The foetus is probably dead by now. Though it wouldn't be the first time I performed a Caesarean. My boy here was born that way.”

“You don't say.”

Magnus stepped over to the pine coffin. He leaned down to look, stiffly, as much from a bad back as out of his courtly manner.

The black crowd watched intently.

It took Magnus a moment to see the face clearly. He had expected to find a young face, even a very young girl's face. What he saw instead was a young-looking middle-aged woman with a black patch over her left eye and a bloody gaping hole where the right eye should have been.

The black crowd waited. Some of the women on the higher ground tittered.

Gradually the true face won out over the expected face in Magnus' mind. “Oh!” A start, then a terrible shudder, swept through Magnus.

Judge Todd leaned down. “Well?”

Magnus almost fell down. Just in time he grabbed hold of the edge of the pine coffin.

“Well?”

Magnus turned slowly.

“Yes?”

Magnus tolled his head. “Your Honor, this woman could not have been in a family way.”

“Why not?”

“I know for a fact she couldn't.” Magnus avoided looking at Ransom.

“Why not?”

“Please the court, may I examine the body further?”

“For what purpose do you wish this further examination?”

“Examination will show that this woman once underwent a Caesarean operation.”

“What? How? Hey? What's this?”

“Your Honor, I know this for a fact because as a surgeon I once performed a Caesarean on her.” Magnus' voice almost quit on him. “This woman is my wife Kitty. She gave birth to a boy. During this operation I accidentally spayed her.”

“What? Hey? This woman was your wife once too? And you …? And this is your …?”

“Yes. She couldn't have had another child.”

A cry broke from Ransom. “So that's what that scar was!”

The black crowd whitened.

Ransom slowly turned his head and looked down at Katherine. “That funny jack-o'-lantern scar.”

Judge Todd gobbled.

The black miners prickled stiffly erect. They stood like a drove of mules stunned by a bolt of lightning.

Then Judge Todd got hold of himself. He nodded once down at Magnus. “Show us.”

Magnus still couldn't get himself to look at Ransom. He turned heavily back to the coffin.

Ransom seemed to rise where he stood on the salt barrel. “My God, then she lied to me!”

Magnus undid Katherine's dress. His fingers trembled like the petals of a wiggling coneflower. He opened the dress just enough to show her stomach with its puckered scar.

A shudder, almost happy, moved through the mob of men.

Judge Todd dug a knuckle into his right eye. “So you say you accidentally spayed her?”

“Yes.” Magnus spoke as though exhausted from an uphill run. “You see, Your Honor, I'd never seen a Caesarean done. In fact, this was one of the first ever done in the whole country. So I wasn't too sure of what I was doing. I had to
make a guess as to what was the right thing to do. But I had to do it, take a chance or she would've died. And the child would've died.”

“Lord.”

Ransom's green eyes slowly crossed inward. “I'll have you know that no child has ever passed these portals.”

Judge Todd chewed once. “But, Dr. King, you still have not proved that this man here is in fact and in truth the child you saved from this woman's belly.”

Magnus' heart almost stopped beating. His black eyes rolled ghastly. He did not want to dwell on what might happen to Ransom's mind when Ransom fully realized what the judge had just said. Magnus toppled.

Clemens caught Magnus by the shoulders and kept him from falling.

Ransom did catch what the judge had just said. Ransom shifted slightly and looked straight at Magnus. Ransom's green eyes seethed hell. “Stranger, if what you say is true, then I've slept with my own mother.”

A gentle sigh escaped the crowd. A mumbling sound rose from the lines of mothers on higher ground.

Magnus still couldn't look Ransom in the eye. Magnus shook off Clemens' hands; then with professional fingers covered Katherine up again.

Judge Todd leaned forward on his spring seat. “Dr. King, then you shot at this woman too?”

“Yes.” Magnus gently touched the black patch on Katherine's face. “One of my shots hit Kitty in the left eye. But I really didn't want to kill her. You see, I was a dead shot in those days and at point-blank range I should not have missed her. But I just couldn't seem to get in a good shot. I tried but my hand just would not steady in.”

Ransom cried it out. “Oh my GodI”

Magnus' heart beat violently, irregularly. “If only our old night watchman back in Sioux City were here. Herman Bell.
He could tell you all about it. He'd know.” Pause. “Oh, God, how terrible it is to have to be saying these things.”

Again Ransom cried it out. “Oh my God! Now I remember.” The skin around Ransom's eyes blanched to a turnip color. “It comes back to me now like a flash of gunpowder! Herman Bell's the one that scared me into running away. He said, “Son, my God, you didn't shoot your own mother, did you?' and I said, “Dad did,' and he said, “Who shot your dad?' and I said, ‘I did.' Now I remember. Ohh! Ohh!”

“Pop goes the weasel,” a miner in the crowd whispered.