CHAPTER II
THE VIGILANTES
Bill Wilson came to the door of his saloon and stood with his handson his hips, looking out upon the heterogeneous assembly of virilemanhood that formed the bulk of San Francisco's population a year ortwo after the first gold cry had been raised. Above his head flappedthe great cloth sign tacked quite across the rough building, heraldingto all who could read the words that this was BILL WILSON'S PLACE.A flaunting bit of information it was, and quite superfluous; sincepractically every man in San Francisco drifted towards it, soon orlate, as the place where the most whisky was drunk and the most goldlost and won, with the most beautiful women to smile or frown upon thelucky, in all the town.
The trade wind knew that Bill Wilson's place needed no sign save itspresence there, and was loosening a corner in the hope of carrying itquite away as a trophy. Bill glanced up, promised the resisting clothan extra nail or two, and let his thoughts and his eyes wanderagain to the sweeping tide of humanity that flowed up and down thestraggling street of sand and threatened to engulf the store which menspoke of simply as "Smith's."
A shipload of supplies had lately been carted there, and minerswere feverishly buying bacon, beans, "self-rising" flour, matches,tea--everything within the limits of their gold dust and theircarrying capacity--which they needed for hurried trips to the hillswhere was hidden the gold they dreamed of night and day.
To Bill that tide meant so much business; and he was not the man togrudge his friend Smith a share of it. When the fog crept in throughthe Golden Gate--a gate which might never be closed against it--thetide of business would set towards his place, just as surely as theocean tide would clamor at the rocky wall out there to the west. Inthe meantime, he was not loath to spend a quiet hour or two with anempty gaming hall at his back.
His eyes went incuriously over the familiar crowd to the little forestof flag-foliaged masts that told where lay the ships in the bay belowthe town. Bill could not name the nationality of them all; for thehunting call had reached to the far corners of the earth, andstrange flags came fluttering across strange seas, with pirate-facedadventurers on the decks below, chattering in strange tongues ofCalifornia gold. Bill could not name all the flags, but he could nametwo of the bonds that bind all nations into one common humanity. Hecould produce one of them, and he was each night gaining more of theother; for, be they white men or brown, spoke they his language orone he had never heard until they passed through the Golden Gate, theywould give good gold for very bad whisky.
Even the Digger Indians, squatting in the sun beside his door andgazing stolidly at the town and the bay beyond, would sell theirsouls--for which the gray-gowned padres prayed ineffectively in thechapel at Dolores--their wives or their other, dearer possessions fora very little bottle of the stuff that was fast undoing the civilizingwork of the Mission. The padres had come long before the hunting crywas raised, and they had labored earnestly; but their prayers andtheir preaching were like reeds beneath the tread of elephants, whengold came down from the mountains, and whisky came in through theGolden Gate.
Jack Allen, coming lazily down through the long, deserted room, edgedpast Bill in the doorway.
"Hello," Bill greeted with a carefully casual manner, as if he hadbeen waiting for the meeting, but did not want Jack to suspect thefact. "Up for all day? Where you headed for?"
"Breakfast--or dinner, whichever you want to call it. Then I'm goingto take a walk and get the kinks out of my legs. Say, old man, I'mgoing to knock a board off the foot of that bunk, to-night, or elsesleep on the floor. Was wood scarce, Bill, when you built that bed?"
"Carpenter was a little feller," chuckled Bill, "and I guess hemeasured it by himself. Charged a full length price, though, Iremember! I meant to tell you when you hired that room, Jack, thatyou better take the axe to bed with you. Sure, knock a board off;two boards, if you like. Take _all_ the boards off!" urged Bill, ina burst of generosity. "You might better be making that bunk over,m'son, than trying to take the whole blamed town apart and put ittogether again, like you was doing last night." In this way Billtactfully swung to the subject that lay heavy on his mind.
Jack borrowed a match, cupped his fingers around his lips that wantedto part in a smile, and lighted his before-breakfast cigarette--thoughthe sun hung almost straight overhead.
"So that's it," he observed, when the smoke took on the sweet aromaof a very mild tobacco. "I saw by the back of your neck that you hadsomething on your mind. What's the matter, Bill? Don't you think theold town needs taking apart?"
"Oh, it needs it, all right. But it's too big a job for one man totackle. You leave that to Daddy Time; he's the only reformer--"
"Say, Bill, I never attempted to reform anybody or anything in mylife; I'd hate to begin with a job the size of this." He waved hiscigarette toward the shifting crowd. "But I do think--"
"And right there's where you make a big mistake. You don't want tothink! Or if you do, don't think out loud; not where such men as Swiftand Rawhide and the Captain can hear you. That's what I mean, Jack."
Jack eyed him with a smile in his eyes. "Some men might think you wereafraid of that bunch," he observed with characteristic bluntness. "Iknow you aren't, and so I don't see why you want me to be. You know,and I know, that the Vigilance Committee has turned rotten to thecore; every decent man in San Francisco knows it. You know that Sandykilled that Spaniard in self-defense--or if you didn't see the fracas,I tell you now that he did; I saw the whole thing. You know, at anyrate, that the Vigilantes took him out and hung him because theywanted to get rid of him, and that came the nearest to an excuse theycould find. You know--"
"Oh, I know!" Bill's voice was sardonic. "I know they'll be goingaround with a spy-glass looking for an excuse to hang you, too, if youdon't quit talking about 'em."
Jack smiled and so let a thin ribbon of smoke float up and away fromhis lips.
Bill saw the smile and flushed a little; but he was not to be laugheddown, once he was fairly started. He laid two well-kept fingers uponthe other's arm and spoke soberly, refusing to treat the thing aslightly as the other was minded to do.
"Oh, you'll laugh, but it's a fact, and you know it. Why, ain'tSandy's case proof enough that I'm right? I heard you telling a crowdin there last night--" Bill tilted his head backward towards the roombehind them--"that this law-and-order talk is all a farce. What if itis? It don't do any good for you to bawl it out in public and get theworst men in the Committee down on you, does it?
"What you'd better do, Jack, is go on down to Palo Alto where yourpardner is. He's got some sense. I wouldn't stay in the darned townovernight, the way they're running things now, if it wasn't for mybusiness. Ever since they made Tom Perkins captain there's been hellto pay all round. I can hold my own; I'm up where they don't daretackle me; but you take a fool's advice and pull out before theCaptain gets his eagle eye on you. Talk like you was slinging aroundlast night is about as good a trouble-raiser as if you emptied boththem guns of yours into that crowd out there."
"You're asking me to run before there's anything to run away from."Jack's lips began to show the line of stubbornness. "I haven'tquarreled with the Captain, except that little fuss a month ago, whenhe was hammering that peon because he couldn't talk English; I'mnot going to. And if they did try any funny work with me, old-timer,why--as you say, these guns--"
"Oh, all right, m'son! Have it your own way," Bill retorted grimly."I know you've got a brace of guns; and I know you can plant a bulletwhere you want it to land, about as quick as the next one. I haven'ta doubt but what you're equal to the Vigilantes, with both hands tied!Of course," he went on with heavy irony, "I have known of some mightyable men swinging from the oak, lately. There'll likely be more,before the town wakes up and weeds out some of the cutthroat elementthat's running things now to suit themselves."
Jack looked at him quickly, struck by something in Bill's voice thatbetrayed his real concern. "Don't take it to heart, Bill," he said,dropping his bantering and his stubbornness tog
ether. "I won't air myviews quite so publicly, after this. I know I was a fool to talk quiteas straight as I did last night; but some one else brought up thesubject of Sandy; and Swift called him a name Sandy'd have smashed himin the face for, if he'd been alive and heard it. I always liked thefellow, and it made me hot to see them hustle him out of town and hanghim like they'd shoot a dog that had bitten some one, when I _knew_ hedidn't deserve it. You or I would have shot, just as quick as he did,if a drunken Spaniard made for us with a knife. So would the Captain,or Swift, or any of the others.
"I know--I've got a nasty tongue when something riles me, and I lashout without stopping to think. Dade has given me the devil for that,more times than I can count. He went after me about this very thing,too, the other day. I'll try and forget about Sandy; it doesn't makepleasant remembering, anyway. And I'll promise to count a hundredbefore I mention the Committee above a whisper, after this--ninehundred and ninety-nine before I take the name of Swift or the Captainin vain!" He smiled full at Bill--a smile to make men love him for thebig-hearted boy he was.
But Bill did not grin back. "Well, it won't hurt you any; they're badmen to fuss with, both of 'em," he warned somberly.
"Come on out and climb a hill or two with me," Jack urged. "You'vegot worse kinks in your system, to-day, than I've got in my legs. Youwon't? Well, better go back and take another sleep, then; it may putyou in a more optimistic mood." He went off up the street towards thehills to the south, turning in at the door of a tented eating-placefor his belated breakfast.
"Optimistic hell!" grunted Bill. "You can't tell a man anything hedon't think he knows better than you do, till he's past thirty. I wasa fool to try, I reckon."
He glowered at the vanishing figure, noting anew how tall and straightJack was in his close-fitting buckskin jacket, with the crimson sashknotted about his middle in the Spanish style, his trousers tuckedinto his boots like the miners, and to crown all, a white sombrerosuch as the vaqueros wore. Handsome and headstrong he was; and Billshook his head over the combination which made for trouble in thatland where the primal instincts lay all on the surface; where menlooked askance at the one who drew oftenest the glances of the womenand who walked erect and unafraid in the midst of the lawlessness.Jack Allen was fast making enemies, and no one knew it better thanBill.
When the young fellow disappeared, Bill looked again at the shiftingcrowd upon which his eyes were wont to rest with the speculative gazeof a farmer who leans upon the fence that bounds his land, and regardshis wheat-fields ripening for the sickle. He liked Jack, and the soulof him was bitter with the bitterness that is the portion of maturity,when it must stand by and see youth learn by the pangs of experiencethat fire will burn most agonizingly if you hold your hand in theblaze.
One of his night bartenders came up; and Bill, dismissing Jack fromhis mind, with a grunt of disgust, went in to talk over certainchanges which he meant to make in the bar as soon as he could getmaterial and carpenter together upon the spot.
He was still fussing with certain of the petty details that make ormar the smooth running of an establishment like his, when his ear,trained to detect the first note of discord in the babble which filledhis big room by night, caught an ominous note in the hum of the streetcrowd outside. He lifted his head from examining a rickety table-leg.
"Go see what's happened, Jim," he suggested to the man, who had justcome up with a hammer and some nails; and went back to dreaming of thetime when his place should be a palace, and he would not have to nailthe legs on his tables every few days because of the ebullitions ofexcitement in his customers. He had strengthened the legs, and wastesting them by rocking the table slightly with a broad palm upon it,when Jim came back.
"Some shooting scrape, back on the flat," Jim announced indifferently."Some say it was a hold-up. Two or three of the Committee have goneout to investigate."
"Yeah--I'll bet the Committee went out!" snorted Bill. "They'll belynching the Diggers' dogs for fighting, when the supply of humansruns out. They've just about played that buckskin out, packing menout to the oak to hang 'em lately," he went on glumly, sliding therejuvenated table into its place in the long row that filled thatside of the room. "I never saw such an enthusiastic bunch as they'regetting to be!"
"That's right," Jim agreed perfunctorily, as a man is wont to agreewith his employer. "Somebody'll hang, all right."
"There's plenty that need it--if the Committee only had sense enoughto pick 'em out and leave the rest alone," growled Bill, going fromtable to table, tipping and testing for other legs that wobbled.
Jim sensed the rebuff in his tone and went back to the door, aroundwhich a knot of men engaged in desultory conjectures while they waitedexpectantly. A large tent that Perkins had found convenient as atemporary jail for those unfortunates upon whom his heavy hand fellswiftly, stood next to Bill's place; and it spoke eloquently of themanner in which the Committee then worked, that men gathered thereinstinctively at the first sign of trouble. For when the Committeewent out after culprits, it did not return empty-handed, as thepopulace knew well. Zealous custodians of the law were they, as Billhad said; and though they might have exchanged much of their zeal fora little of Bill's sense of justice (to the betterment of the town),few of the waiting crowd had the temerity to say so.
Up the street, necks (whose owners had not thought it worth while towade through the sand to the scene of the shooting) were being cranedtowards the flat behind the town, where the Captain and a few of hismen had hurried at the first shot.
"They're comin'," Jim announced, thrusting his head into the gamblinghall and raising his voice above the sound of the boss's nail-driving.
"Well--what of it?" snapped Bill. "Why don't you yell at me that thesun is going to set in the west to-night?" Bill drove the head of afour-cornered, iron nail clean out of sight in a table top. And Jimprudently withdrew his head and turned his face and his attentiontowards the little procession that was just coming into sight at theend of the rambling street, with the crowd closing in behind it as thewater comes surging together behind an ocean liner.
Jim worshiped his boss, but he knew better than to argue with him whenBill happened to be in that particular mood, which, to tell the truth,was not often. But in five minutes or less he had forgotten the snub.His head popped in again.
"Bill!"
There may be much meaning in a tone, though it utters but oneunmeaning word. Bill dropped a handful of nails upon a table and camestriding down the long room to the door; pushed Jim unceremoniouslyaside and stood upon the step. He was just in time to look into therageful, blue eyes of Jack Allen, walking with a very straight backand a contemptuous smile on his lips, between the Captain and one ofhis trusted lieutenants.
Bill's fingers clenched suggestively upon the handle of the hammer.His jaw slackened and then pushed itself forward to a fighting anglewhile he stared, and he named in his amazement that place which thepadres had taught the Indians to fear.
The Captain heard him and grinned sourly as he passed on. Jack heardhim, and his smile grew twisted at the tone in which the word wasuttered; but he still smiled, which was more than many a man wouldhave done in his place.
Bill stood while the rest of that grim procession passed his place.There was another, a young fellow who looked ready to cry, walkingunsteadily behind Jack, both his arms gripped by others of theVigilance Committee. There were two crude stretchers, borne bystolid-faced miners in red flannel shirts and clay-stained boots.On the first a dead man lay grinning up at the sun, his teeth justshowing under his bushy mustache, a trickle of red running down fromhis temple. On the next a man groaned and mumbled blasphemy betweenhis groanings.
Bill took it all in, a single glance for each,--a glance trained bygambling to see a great deal between the flicker of his lashes. Hedid not seem to look once at the Captain, yet he knew that Jack'sivory-handled pistols hung at the Captain's rocking hips as he wentstriding past; and he knew that malice lurked under the grizzled hairwhich hid the Captain's cruel lips;
and that satisfaction glowed inthe hard, sidelong glance he gave his prisoner.
He stood until he saw Jack duck his head under the tent flaps of thejail and the white-faced youth follow shrinking after. He stood whilethe armed guards took up their stations on the four sides of thetent and began pacing up and down the paths worn deep in tragicsignificance. He saw the wounded man carried into Pete's place acrossthe way, and the dead man taken farther down the street. He saw thecrowd split into uneasy groups which spoke a common tongue, that theymight exchange unasked opinions upon this, the biggest sensation sinceSandy left town with his ankles tied under the vicious-eyed buckskinwhose riders rode always toward the west and whose saddle was alwaysempty when he came back to his stall at the end of the town. Bill sawit all, to the last detail; but after his one explosive oath, he wasapparently the most indifferent of them all.
When the Captain ended his curt instructions to the guard and cametowards him, Bill showed a disposition to speak.
"Who's the kid?" he drawled companionably, while his fingers itchedupon the hammer, and the soul of him lusted for sight of the hole itcould make in the skull of the Captain. "I don't recollect seeing himaround town--and there ain't many faces I forget, either."
The Captain shot him a surprised look that was an unconscious tributeto Bill's diplomatic art. But Bill's level glance would have disarmeda keener man than Tom Perkins.
Perkins stopped. "Stranger, from what he said--though I've got mydoubts. Some crony of Allen's, I expect. It was him done the shooting;the kid didn't have any gun on him. Allen didn't deny it, either."
"No--he's just bull-headed enough to tough it out," commented Bill."What was the row about--do yuh know?"
Perkins stiffened. "That," he said with some dignity, "will come outat the trial. He killed Rawhide outright, and Texas Bill will die,I reckon. The trial will show what kinda excuse he thought he had."Having delivered himself, thus impartially and with malice towardsnone, Perkins started on.
"Oh, say! You don't mind if I talk to 'em?" Bill gritted his teeth athaving to put the sentence in that favor-seeking tone, but he did it,nevertheless.
The Captain scowled under his black, slouch hat. "I've give strictorders not to let anybody inside the tent till after the trial," hesaid shortly.
"Oh, that's all right. I'll talk to 'em through the door," Bill agreedequably. "Jack owes me some money."
The Captain muttered unintelligibly and passed on, and Bill chose tointerpret the mutter as consent. He strolled over to the tent, jokedcondescendingly with the guard who stood before it, and announced thatthe Captain had said he might talk to the prisoners.
"I did not," said the Captain unexpectedly at his shoulder. "I saidyou couldn't. After the trial, you can collect what's coming to you,Mr. Wilson. That is," he added hastily, "in case Allen should beconvicted. If he ain't, you can do as you please." He looked full atthe guard. "Shoot any man that attempts to enter that tent or talk tothe prisoners without my permission, Shorty," he directed, and turnedhis back on Bill.
Bill did not permit one muscle of his face to twitch. "All right," hedrawled, "I guess I won't go broke if I don't get it. You mind whatyour Captain tells you, Shorty! He's running this show, and what hesays goes. You've got a good man over yuh, Shorty. A fine man. He'llweed out the town till it'll look like grandpa's onion bed--if thesupply of rope don't give out!" Whereupon he strolled carelessly backto his place, and went in as if the incident were squeezed dry ofinterest for him. He walked to the far end of the big room, satdeliberately down upon a little table, and rewarded himself for hisforbearance by cursing methodically the Captain, the Committee ofwhich he was the leader, the men who had witlessly given him thepower he used so ruthlessly as pleased him best, and Jack Allen, whoseill-timed criticisms and hot-headed freedom of speech had brought uponhimself the weight of the Committee's dread hand.
"Damn him, I tried to tell him!" groaned Bill, his face hidden behindhis palms. "They'll hang him--and darn my oldest sister's cat's eyes,somebody'll sweat blood for it, too!" (Bill, you will observe, hadreached the end of real blasphemy and was forced to improvise milderexpletives as he went along.) "There ought to be enough decent men inthis town to--"
"Did you git to see Jack?" ventured Jim, coming anxiously up to hisboss.
The tone of him, which was that hushed tone which we employ in thepresence of the dead, so incensed Bill that for answer he threw thehammer viciously in his direction. Jim took the hint and retreatedhastily.
"No, damn 'em, they won't let me near him," said Bill, ashamed of hisviolence. "I knew they'd get him; but I didn't think they'd get him soquick. I sent a letter down by an Injun this morning to his pardner tocome up and get him outa town before he--But it's too late now. Thattalk he made last night--"
"Say, he shot Swift in the arm, too," said Jim. "Pity he didn't killhim. They're getting a jury together already. Say! Ain't it hell?"