Эл Дженнингс: Through the Shadows with O'Henry

Love came to Ed and offered him $1,000 in cash to dump Garst. Ed refused and won the case for his client. He won it on the ground that Love had no right to the land in the first place and was himself a trespasser.

Love was out his $3,000. He was a bad loser. Ed's fate was really sealed when he won that case. Love waited his chance.

It came a few weeks later. I went to Woodward to visit my father. Ed was defending a group of boys on a burglary charge. Temple Houston, Love's attorney, was prosecuting. Ed asked me to assist him. The case was going against Houston. The atmosphere was charged with bitterness. In the midst of my plea, Houston got to his feet, slammed his fist on the table and shouted, "Your honor, the gentleman is grossly ignorant of the law."

"You're a damn' liar," I answered, without any particular heat, but as one asserting an evident fact.

It was like a blow in the face to Houston. He lost all control of himself. "Take that back, you damn' little !" He hurled the unpardonable epithet, and sprang at me.

His face was bursting with rage. His hand was on his forty-five and I had mine leveled at him. Lightning anger was striking in all directions. Men rushed to the one side and the other. Somebody dashed the six-shooter from my hand. At the same moment I saw Houston surrounded and disarmed.

The court proceedings ended for the day. But feeling ran high the white-hot fury of the Southern cow people. Nothing but blood cools it. We knew that the settlement must be made.

For once in my life I was not eager to square the account with killings. We went to Ed's office, my father and my two brothers. My father's harried face was like a reproach to our hot tempers. He was a broken man. He seemed to see the tragic failure of his life of robust endeavor.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, almost in an appeal.

"Nothing, until tomorrow," I told him, for I had made my plans. I intended to meet Houston, apologize for my insults, demand the same from him and let it go at that. If Houston refused it would be time enough to meet the issue.

My decision was not to be. The town was divided into two factions. Ours outnumbered Houston's two to one. They made up in their rankling animosity what they lacked in numbers. It was as if two tigers stood ready to spring and each but waited to get the other in a corner.

Ed and John agreed to stay in town to watch the office. I went home with my father.

Never had the magnetism of his kind, turbulent nature seemed so forcible as in the weakness of his fear for us. He was in a reminiscent mood. For the first time he spoke of that day when he had struck me down at Shrieber's store. The tears crowded into his eyes. I knew that many a torturing moment had paid for that irresponsible blow.

At 10 o'clock we went to bed. It was a hot summer night. We left our doors open. I was just dropping into a slumber when I heard the stumble of frantic footsteps on the steps below. The door was pushed to and a broken voice called out :

"Judge, get up, get up, judge, quick; they have killed both your boys!"

"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.