THE LAST CHANCE

THERE was a hot time in old Geronimo on the night that Ike Crittenden and his cowboys rode in, and in spite of everything he could do three of them wound up in the jag-cell before morning. Nevertheless he had plenty of witnesses and to spare, for the grand jury merely went over the same evidence that had been taken before the magistrate and handed down an indictment against Pecos Dalhart, accusing him of feloniously and unlawfully marking, branding, or altering the brand on one neat animal, to wit, a spotted calf, belonging to Isaac Crittenden of Verde Crossing. It was almost the first case on the calendar and the arraignment was set for the following Monday. Then Pecos Dalhart, defendant, slouched gloomily back to his cell and sat down to await the issue. The howls of Angevine Thorne, blended with the hoarse protests of Crit's cowboys, floated in to him from the jag-cell and he knew his faithful attorney had not deserted him, but what a broken reed was that to lean on when his whole future hung in the balance! Even as he listened he had an uneasy fear that Angy was giving the whole snap away to the drunken cowboys and once more he begged Bill Todhunter to throw Babe into the tanks where he could look after him. It was at this time, when things were at their worst, that Shepherd Kilkenny, the district attorney, came down to look into his case and find out how he would plead.

He was a very cautious man, Mr. Kilkenny, and he never had a man indicted unless he held his written confession or knew beyond the peradventure of a doubt that he could convict him. In the case of Pecos Dalhart he had been unusually careful, for it was the first case of cattle stealing to come before him and most of his constituents were in the cow business; therefore, not to take any chances, he had followed it from the magistrate's court to the secret chambers of the grand jury, and now he was going after a confession. He came with gifts, a brace of cigars, but Pecos was well supplied with cigarette makings and waved them courteously aside. Then they got down to business.

"Mr. Dalhart," began Kilkenny, "I'm the district attorney and I've come to talk over your case with you—in a friendly way, you understand. Ah—have you engaged an attorney? No? Well, that is hardly necessary, you know, but if you do call in a counsellor I am sure he will advise you to plead 'Guilty.' Ahem—yes, indeed. There's many a man stole his calf and got away with it, but you were caught in the act and observed by twenty witnesses. Not the ghost of a chance, you see; but if you plead 'Guilty' and throw yourself upon the mercy of the court it will cut your sentence in half, probably more. I'm a friend of yours, Mr. Dalhart, and I've often heard the sheriff speak of your exemplary character as a prisoner. All these things are appreciated, you know, and I—well, I'll do all I can for you with the judge. Now all you have to do is to sign this little paper and—"

"I'm sorry," said Pecos, thrusting the paper back, "and I sure take it kindly of you, Mr. Kilkenny, but I can't plead 'Guilty'—not to please nobody—because I'm not guilty."

"Not guilty!" The district attorney laughed. "Why, you were taken in the act, Mr. Dalhart. I never saw a more conclusive line of evidence."

"Well," grumbled Pecos, "if I was guilty I'd sure plead 'Guilty,' you can bank on that. But this blankety-blank, Ike Crittenden, has jest framed up a lot of evidence to railroad me to the pen—and them cowboys of his would swear to anything for the drinks. You wouldn't soak a man on evidence like that, would you, Mr. District Attorney?"

"I'd soak him on any evidence I could get," responded the district attorney succinctly. "You know my reputation, Mr. Dalhart—I convict every man that pleads 'Not guilty'!"

"But s'pose he isn't guilty!" cried Pecos.

"I convict him anyway!" replied the district attorney. "Are you going to sign this, or are you going ahead like a damned fool and get the limit in Yuma?"

"I won't sign it," said Pecos firmly.

"Very well," responded Kilkenny, closing his little book with a snap. He rose to his full height and pursed his lips ominously. "Very well, Mr. Dalhart!" he said, nodding and blinking his eyes. "Very well, sir!" Then he retired, leaving so much unsaid that it threw Pecos into a panic. In a very real picture he could see himself sitting in the shade of a big adobe wall and making State's-prison bridles for life. He could see the guards pacing back and forth on top of the bastions and Pete Monat holding one end of a horse-hair strand while he swung a little trotter and twisted the loose hairs into the other end, forever and forever. It was awful. The full sense of his impending doom rushed in upon him and he laid hold of the sodden Babe who was maundering about the revolution, and shook him frantically.

"My God, Angy," he cried, "wake up and do something! Fergit about the common people and do something for me! Fergit that you ever had any principles and he'p me fight that low-lived dastard or I'll go to Yuma for life!"

"The voice of the people shall rule in the land!" pronounced Angy oracularly.

"To hell with the people!" yelled Pecos. "It's the People that's tryin' to send me up! Do you want me to git twelve years for brandin' that spotted calf? Well, wake up, then, and git yore wits to work!"

Angy woke up, by degrees, but his wits would not work. The ecstasy of intoxication was past and his mind was a legal blank for the remainder of that day. The day was Friday, and Pecos had to plead on Monday—"Guilty" or "Not guilty." "Guilty" meant six or eight years in prison; "Not guilty" meant twelve years—or freedom. It was a gamble, but he would risk it if Angy would remain sober enough to talk. His only chance of freedom lay in his friend's misdirected eloquence, and when Babe was entirely himself Pecos backed him up into a corner and talked to him with tears in his voice.

"Never, never, never—" began Angy, holding up his hand to swear; but Pecos stopped him with a sign.

"Nothing like that, Pardner," he said. "You been breakin' that pledge for forty years. Jest look me in the eye now and promise me you won't tech a drop until I'm free."

"All right, Pecos," agreed Angy, "I'll do it, I won't touch a drop till you're free."

"And when I'm free," continued Pecos, "I'll stake you to a drunk from which Geronimo will sure date time. Now let's git down to business."

The details of that campaign against the People were talked over in hushed secrecy and when on Monday morning Pecos appeared before the stern judge to plead, Angevine Thorne stood just within the rail, shuffling his worn hat nervously.

"I will call the case of the People versus Pecos Dalhart," said the judge. "Pecos Dalhart, to the charge of grand larceny do you plead 'Guilty' or 'Not guilty'?"

"'Not guilty,' Your Honor!" responded Pecos.

"The defendant enters a plea of 'Not guilty,'" observed the judge impassively. "Are you represented by counsel, Mr. Dalhart?"

"No, Your Honor," replied Pecos.

"You understand, do you not, that in case you are unable to employ an attorney the court will appoint one to advise you, free of charge?"

"Yes, Your Honor," answered Pecos, "but if it's all the same to you I'd rather not have a lawyer. I'd like to ask a favor, Judge, if you don't mind. The reason I don't want an attorney appointed is that I know very well none of these lawyers around here can stand up to the district attorney when it comes to a case of law"—here Kilkenny smiled grimly to himself and glanced at Mr. Baker of the Blade—"but at the same time, Judge, I do want some one to speak for me, and I'm goin' to ask you to appoint my friend Mr. Thorne, back there, as my counsellor."

"Mr. Thorne?" inquired the judge, and as Angy stepped forward, smirking and bowing, a slight smile broke up the fine legal lines on the judicial brows. At no time was Angy over-fastidious about his attire, and a night in jail, particularly in the jag-cell, is warranted to spoil the appearance of the finest suit of clothes that was ever made. Angy's clothes were old and worn; his shirt was greasy around the neck, and his overalls, hanging loosely about his hips, piled up in slovenly rolls above his shoe-tops; his hat, from much fanning of open fires, was grimed with ashes and whitened with splashes of sour dough, and his shiny bald head and red face told all too plainly the story of his past. In the titter that followed his announcement he stood silent, rolling his bloodshot eyes upon the audience, but as the grinning bailiff smote the table for order he turned with the dignity of an orator and addressed the judge.

"Your Honor," he said, beginning the set speech which he had prepared, "I am not unaware that this request on the part of the defendant is a little irregular, but if the court please I should like to state the reasons—"

"Just a moment!" cut in the district attorney brusquely. "Your Honor, I object to this man being appointed to the position of counsellor on the ground that he is not a duly-licensed attorney and therefore not competent to practise in this court."

"As I am tendering my services without hope of compensation," observed Angy suavely, "and also without submitting briefs or other legal papers, I hope that the court will overlook this trifling irregularity. The law referred to by the district attorney, as applied to this case, was intended solely to protect the defendant in his rights, the inference being that no one not a regularly practising attorney is competent to adequately represent the defendant against the learned district attorney"—Angy bowed to that gentleman—"but at the same time, Your Honor, I wish to say that in days gone by I have stood before the bar"—the bailiff struck his gavel to quiet the sudden laughter—"I have stood before the bar of justice, Your Honor, and I have stood there, sir, not as Angevine Thorne, the drunkard, but as a regular practitioner in that court. I submit, Your Honor, that I am fully qualified, both by past experience and present information, to represent Mr. Dalhart in this unfortunate case!"

A murmur of astonishment passed around the room at this revelation of his past; for while Angevine Thorne had been about Geronimo, drunk and sober, for over twenty years, he had never referred except in the vaguest terms to the life which he had left behind. It struck wonder into the breasts of the court-room bums, many of whom had shared the jag-cell with him in times past, and Mr. Baker of the Blade sank down into a seat and began to write hurriedly upon his pad; but Shepherd Kilkenny, with a sudden premonition of what Angy's "present information" might lead to, did not yield himself to any such puny emotion as surprise. He was a fighter, and a sure-thing fighter to boot.

"Your Honor!" he cried, "I wish to protest most—"

"Objection is overruled!" interposed the judge. "I see no reason why Mr. Thorne should not conduct this case if the defendant so wishes, and the clerk will enter him accordingly. Would Wednesday be too soon for you to prepare your argument, Mr. Thorne? Is it satisfactory to you, Mr. Kilkenny? Very well, then, I will set the case for Wednesday, the eighth of October, at ten A. M. Call the next case, Mr. Bailiff!"

The bailiff called it, still smiling, and in the pause half the occupants of the court-room boiled out onto the court-house lawn and gave vent to their pent-up emotions. Babe Thorne was going to buck Kilkenny and plead a case in court! He would make an impassioned appeal and raise Cain with Ike Crittenden's witnesses—it would be an event never to be forgotten! Still laughing they scattered through the town, and soon men came hurrying forth from the different saloons to verify the report; they gathered in a crowd by the sheriff's office and, as the word spread that it was true, gangs of cowboys and men on livery-stable plugs went dashing down the streets, whooping and laughing and crying the news to their friends. It was a new excitement—something doing—and the way an Arizona town will take on over some such trifling event is nothing short of scandalous. Within two hours the leisure male population of Geronimo was divided into two hostile camps—those who would get Babe drunk before the event and those who would keep him sober and have him take a fall out of Kilkenny. On the one side it was argued that, unless he was properly ginned up, Babe would not do justice to the occasion; but cooler heads won on the proposition that the judge would bar him if he got drunk and hollered, and a committee of prominent citizens was organized to protect him from himself.

Being quick to see the news value of the incident the Blade printed an exclusive interview with Angevine Thorne—formerly of the Kentucky bar—and announced that the trial would be covered in detail by "our Mr. Baker." A series of Communications, written under pressure in the card-rooms of various casinos, expressed the greatest indignation at the "dastardly attempt of a certain interested party to debar Mr. Thorne from the trial," and the hope that this exhibition of professional jealousy would receive the rebuke it so richly deserved. In an editorial the Daily Blade spoke at some length of the rare eloquence of "our gifted fellow-citizen, Colonel Thorne," and felicitated Alcalde Dalhart upon the acumen he had shown in retaining counsel. Everything goes, in a case like that, and the Blade played it up to the limit.

As night came on a select circle of visitors gathered at the county jail to witness the kangaroo trial of two more of Crit's cowboys who had unwittingly placed themselves in the power of Pecos Dalhart. The summary punishment of the first three—the ones who had occupied the jag-cell with Angevine Thorne—had been heralded far and wide as an example of poetic justice, but the grim humor of this last arraignment set the town in an uproar. Within two days these same booze-fighting cowboys would appear against him in the upper court, but of that event Pecos Dalhart took no thought and he kangarooed them to a finish. It was good business, as the actors say, and won him many a friend, for Arizona loves a sport—but after they had been spread-eagled over a chair and received twenty blows for contempt of court, the cowboys were ready to take their oath to anything. That was it—Pecos might win the hearts of the people and still go down before the law and the evidence. Only two things cheered him on—Angy and Bill Todhunter had gone up the river for Old Funny-face, and Joe Garcia was in town. After Crit had sworn himself into perdition over the calf they would spring Funny-face on him—Mexican brands and all—and show that he was a liar. Then JosÉ Garcia would testify to the sale of Funny-face and her calf and the rest would go off in a canter. It was a pleasing dream, and Pecos indulged it to the full, for it was the only hope he had. But the next morning he was nervous.

It was the day before his trial and even his six months in jail had not taught him to be patient. As soon as the cells were unlocked he began to pace up and down the corridor like a caged lion, scowling and muttering to himself. To the stray visitors who dropped in he was distant but civil, as befits a man who must act his part, but all the time a growing uneasiness was gnawing at his heart and he looked past them to the outer door. Hours dragged by and his uneasiness changed into despair; he hurled himself upon his bunk and was lying with his haggard face to the bars when the jail deputy entered and gazed in upon him curiously.

"They's a lady out here to see you," he whispered, laying his finger along his nose with an air of roguish secrecy, "shall I bring her in? She's got something she wants to give you!"

A vision of the unbalanced females who had been bringing flowers to a murderer came over Pecos and he debated swiftly with himself whether to accept this last humiliation or plead a sudden indisposition.

"She's been waiting around all the morning," continued the deputy. "Kinder shy, I reckon—shall I bring 'er in? She's a Mex!"

A Mex! The word shocked Pecos like a blow; it made him glad, and then it made him angry.

"Well, what's the matter with a Mex?" he demanded sharply. "Ain't a Mexican got no rights in this dam' jail? I guess she's as good as any white woman—show her in!"

He waited in palpitating silence, and when the soft rustle of skirts sounded down the corridor his heart stopped beating entirely. Then Marcelina pressed her face against the screened bars and gazed wistfully into the darkened cell. She had grown taller since he last saw her and her dark eyes had taken on a look of infinite melancholy; the rare promise of her youth had flowered suddenly in his absence and she stood before him a woman. Often in his dreams he had thought of her, but always as the black-eyed girl, saucy and fugitive as a bird, who had bewitched him with her childish graces; now she peered in at him through the prison bars with the eyes of a woman who has suffered and found her soul. For a moment she gazed into the darkness, and then she drew back involuntarily. The Pecos she had known was a grown-up boy, grim and quick in speech but full of the reckless fire of youth; a dashing cowboy, guiding his horse by a touch of the hand and riding, riding, always. Here was a hard-faced man, pale and bowed by confinement, and his eyes were like a starved animal's. She started and bit her lip.

"Are you Paycos?" she asked timidly.

The bitterness of his fate swept over Pecos at the words—he looked down at his crumpled clothes, his outworn boots, and faded shirt and rumbled in his throat.

"No, Marcelina," he said, "I'm only a caged wolf—a coyote that the vaqueros have roped and tied and fastened to a tree. I'm a hard-looker, all right—how'd you come to find me?"

She laid a brown hand against the bars as if in protest and motioned him nearer the screen.

"I have only been in town four days," she said hurriedly. "All summer I was shut up at Verde, and Ol' Creet—ah, that bad, ba-ad man! My mother took me to school the day he come to Geronimo. I am 'fraid, Paycos—but this morning I run away to see you. The seesters will be hunt for me now. Look Paycos"—she thrust her hand into the bosom of her dress and drew forth a small bundle, wrapped in a blue silk handkerchief—"Cuidado, be careful," she whispered; "when I keess you good-bye at the door I weel put thees een your hand—ssst!" She turned and looked up the corridor where the deputy was doing the Sherlock. He was a new man—the jail deputy—just helping out during the session of the court and correspondingly impressed with his own importance. Nothing larger than a darning-needle could be passed through the heavy iron screen, but all the same he kept his eye on them, and when he saw the quick thrust of her hand all the suspicions of the amateur sleuth rushed over him at once.

"Hey! What's that?" he demanded, striding down the run-around. "What you got hid there, eh?" He ogled Marcelina threateningly as he stood over her and she shrank before his glance like a school-girl. "Come, now," he blustered, "show me what that is or I'll take it away from you. We don't allow anything to be passed in to the prisoners!"

"She can't pass nothin' through here!" interposed Pecos, tapping on the screen. "You haven't got nothin', have you, Marcelina?"

"Well, I saw her hide something blue in her dress just now," persisted the jailer, "and I want to see it, that's all!"

"It was—it was only a handkerchief!" sobbed Marcelina, clutching at her breast. "No, no! Eet is mine—he—he geev it to me! You can not—" she choked, and backed swiftly toward the door. Like a panther Pecos whipped out of his cell and sprang against the corridor grating, but she was gone. The deputy made a futile grab as she darted away from him and sprang after her, but she swung the great door in his face and sped like a deer down the hall. The next moment she was gone, leaving Pecos and the deputy to have it out together.

"Aha!" cried the deputy vengefully, "you will try to smuggle things in, will you? I'll report this matter to Mr. Morgan at once!"

"Well, report it, then, you low-flung hound!" wailed Pecos, "report it, and be damned to you! But if I was outside these bars I'd beat you to death for this!" They raged up and down the grating, snarling at each other like dogs that fight through a lattice, and even when Boone Morgan came and called them down Pecos would not be appeased.

"He scairt my girl away!" he cried, scowling menacingly at the raw deputy. "She come to give me a handkerchief and he jumped at her. I'll fix him, the dastard, if ever I git a chance!" And so he raged and stormed until they went away and left him, mystified. To Boone Morgan it seemed as if his alcalde was raising a row out of all proportion to his grievance, but that was because Pecos could not explain his woes. Marcelina had promised to kiss him good-bye, and the damned deputy had intervened!