"Killed both your boys!"
The broken cry seemed running up the stairs like a distraught presence; pounding along the walls; shaking through the doors. Its quiver beat through the clamorous silence.
Thought stopped. My blood seemed to be running into molten steel that was wrapping me in quick, hot suffocation. I felt as though I were melting into a lump of motionless terror.
My father's voice sprang through the hush a howl, tortured and agonized, that trailed into a whistling moan. It shot through me like a cold blade. Livid, gray, helpless, his hands dropped to his sides, his eyes like burnt holes in a white cloth, he slumped against the door.
Half dressed, I ran past him, down the street toward the saloon. Something black and hunched fell against me. I put out my hand to strike it off.
"Only me—got Ed—cleaned out—hurry."
It was John. His face was a monstrous red stain. His coat was drenched with blood. His left arm—shattered from the shoulder.
"Hurry 1" he gasped. "Go. I'm O. K. Only got me in the shoulder. Ed's done up. Oh, for God's sake, go and be quick about it."
Ed was dead. John was dying. My father broken-hearted.
And all thanks to me! Never was anybody so whipped with remorse, so crushed. Pretty work my crude violence had done at last ! My unbridled temper was the real murderer. If I had not come on this visit! If I had only stayed on the range! If they had only hanged me in Las Cruces! Like a pack of hounds the bitter thoughts kept baying at me as I went that quarter of a mile to the saloon.
When I lunged through that door the crowd snapped apart like a taut string. Some scooted under the gambling table—others made for the door. The place was cleared.
And there on the floor, lying in a huge blot of warm blood, his face downward, was my brother Ed. He had been shot through the head, just at the base of the brain.
All that was good and human and soft in me rushed into my throat, cried itself out and died that hour that I sat there with Ed's head in my lap and his blood soaked into my hands and my clothes. Death was stealing into my soul with a blight more fatal than the wrecking of my brother's body.
No one spoke—no one put out a hand to me, until presently the doctor leaned forward. "Al, let me do something; get up now."
At the words the saloon was suddenly a-hum with voices. Men crowded about me. Sentences seemed to rush from them like pebbles down a cliff.
"He was right there—playing pitch," some one began. Another and another interrupted.
"They struck from behind— "
"They sneaked in---"
"They soaked him when he was down— "
"They pumped John---"
"They beat it like coyotes— "
And then they put it all together and told it again and again from the beginning.
The saloon was the two-room wooden shack with bar and gambling house combined, the common type in the Middle West a quarter of a century ago. Ed was playing pitch at one of the little side tables in the gambling-room. At one end of this room the town band was giving a concert. A score of crap shooters were busy on either side.
Temple Houston and Jack Love came in by the back door, passed in front of the band and separated, Houston going toward Ed, (Love sneaking, unseen, behind his table. Both men were drunk.
"Are you going to apologize?" Houston blubbered. Ed turned and faced him. His back was to Love.
"When you're sober come back. Apologies will be settled then."
"That's all I wanted to know," Houston answered, shuffling off. At the same instant Love jammed his forty-five against Ed's head and fired. As he dropped, Houston rushed up and pumped two bullets into my brother's skull.
When the shooting broke the gamblers barricaded themselves behind the tables. Men in the bar-room scurried into the street. John was standing outside.
He rushed in as Ed fell. Half way across the outer room Houston and Love caught him with a full volley. Before anyone recovered from the sudden panic the murderers were gone.
They brought Ed home. John lay dying. My father sat up and watched. I could not go near the house. I went out to the barn and waited. I felt like another Cain.
There was no indecision in my mind. I knew that my lawless temper had precipitated the killing. But Love had been laying for Ed. He had ribbed Houston to the shooting. They had murdered deliberately, cowardly—they had shot from behind.
Before the night was over the news went like a flame through the country. Woodward held its breath and waited for the answering shot.
Houston and Love would come back. They expected me to get them.
The remorse of the night before had reared like a coiled snake into a poisonous vengeance. There would be no quitting now.
The mean, sordid gray of early morning had just streaked the night sky. My father came out to the barn. He looked tall and grim, but blanched as a leper.
"Come in with me." His voice seemed pressed and flattened with misery. "Come in here." He led the way to the room where John lay in a moaning delirium.
"There's one," he pointed.
And then he moved silently into the other room where Ed had been placed on the board table.
My father's cavernous eyes glowed into mine in a blazing scrutiny.
"There's two," he said.
"Now what are you going to do? Are you going to finish us?"
It was like a whiplash cutting a welt across my face. I felt like a beaten, cowering dog.
Neither of us spoke. It was hard even to breathe. I could see that my father's hand trembled. I did not want to look into his accusing face.
What did he mean? Did he expect me to do nothing, while all of Woodward waited for the blow?
He knew the spirit of these prairie towns. Men settled their own accounts in swift and deadly fashion. Ex-fugitives and old range men made up the population. They paid little tribute to the law.
The marshals who administered it were the meanest men in the country. They were mostly former horse-thieves, rustlers or renegade gamblers.
The outlaws did their financeering with a six-shooter; the marshals used a whiskey bottle.
I have known deputy U. S. marshals, dozens of times, deliberately sneak the bottle into the schooner wagons going across the plains; double back on the occupants, search the wagons, find the bottle, tie their victims to the trees, hold them until the scoundrelly trick gave them about 10 prisoners. Then they would drive them all into Fort Smith, produce their fraudulent evidence, collect mileage and cold-bloodedly have those innocent men sent up for four or five years on the charge of introducing liquor into the Indian Territory. Ohio penitentiary, when I landed there, was choked with men serving time on such trumped-up cases.
The marshals grabbed off about $2,000 on the deal. The oowpunchers who sometimes became outlaws were clean men by comparison. They took little stock in the justice of sneak thieves.
These things I knew. It was not murder to strike down the men who had shot from the back. In the Middle West, it was honor.
It was not honor that I wanted, but vengeance. Ed and I had been 12 years together. He had taken the place of Stanton, of Chicken. He was more than either to me. Big natured, clear brained, the gentlest fellow that ever lived—and there he was with the back of his poor head blown off with the murderous bullets.
"Listen to me!" My father's voice seemed rumbling through a wall of pain. It jerked me back. "Listen to me. There's been killing enough. There's been sorrow enough.
"Your brother has paid the penalty of vengeance. John, too, may pay. Where will it end? When Woodward runs with blood?"
He went on as though he were possessed.
"You shall not do it. I am the judge here. I was appointed when the county was formed. I was named to maintain the law. If my own sons will not stand by me what can I expect from others?"
All of a sudden he stopped. His colorless face seemed crumpled with misery. "Al, you won't do anything till Frank comes, will you?"
Frank came on from Denver. My father had his way.
"Let them go to trial," Frank said. "He wants it. I'll do no killing."
Frank was always like that, impulsive, soft-hearted, generous—undecided until he got into action, then he tore ahead deadly and relentless as a very hell on wheels. As for myself, I felt a blazing hatred against them all in my heart. I made one promise. I would wait until the trial was over. If the law failed, I would strike.
But we could not stay in Woodward. Not even the old gentleman could stand that. He took John down to Tecumseh and almost immediately was named a judge there. Frank and I went to the sheriff, Tob Olden, and told him we would wait. He was disappointed.
"May want to hit the bull's eye later, boys. When you reckon to bust them off, Tob Olden's house is yours."