Bret Harte - Colonel Starbottle's Client

It may be remembered that it was the habit of that gallant “war-horse” of the Calaveras democracy, Colonel Starbottle, at the close of a political campaign, to return to his original profession of the Law. Perhaps it could not be called a peaceful retirement. The same fiery-tongued eloquence and full-breasted chivalry which had in turns thrilled and overawed freemen at the polls were no less fervid and embattled before a jury. Yet the Colonel was counsel for two or three pastoral Ditch companies and certain bucolic corporations, and although he managed to import into the simplest question of contract more or less abuse of opposing counsel, and occasionally mingled precedents of law with antecedents of his adversary, his legal victories were seldom complicated by bloodshed. He was only once shot at by a free-handed judge, and twice assaulted by an over-sensitive litigant. Nevertheless, it was thought merely prudent, while preparing the papers in the well known case of “The Arcadian Shepherds’ Association of Tuolumne versus the Kedron Vine and Fig Tree Growers of Calaveras,” that the Colonel should seek with a shotgun the seclusion of his partner’s law office in the sylvan outskirts of Rough and Ready for that complete rest and serious preoccupation which Marysville could not afford.

It was an exceptionally hot day. The painted shingles of the plain wooden one-storied building in which the Colonel sat were warped and blistering in the direct rays of the fierce, untempered sun. The tin sign bearing the dazzling legend, “Starbottle and Bungstarter, Attorneys and Counselors,” glowed with an insufferable light; the two pine-trees still left in the clearing around the house, ineffective as shade, seemed only to have absorbed the day-long heat through every scorched and crisp twig and fibre, to radiate it again with the pungent smell of a slowly smouldering fire; the air was motionless yet vibrating in the sunlight; on distant shallows the half-dried river was flashing and intolerable.

Seated in a wooden armchair before a table covered with books and papers, yet with that apparently haughty attitude towards it affected by gentlemen of abdominal fullness, Colonel Starbottle supported himself with one hand grasping the arm of his chair and the other vigorously plying a huge palm-leaf fan. He was perspiring freely. He had taken off his characteristic blue frock-coat, waistcoat, cravat, and collar, and, stripped only to his ruffled shirt and white drill trousers, presented the appearance from the opposite side of the table of having hastily risen to work in his nightgown. A glass with a thin sediment of sugar and lemon-peel remaining in it stood near his elbow. Suddenly a black shadow fell on the staring, uncarpeted hall. It was that of a stranger who had just entered from the noiseless dust of the deserted road. The Colonel cast a rapid glance at his sword-cane, which lay on the table.

But the stranger, although sallow and morose-looking, was evidently of pacific intent. He paused on the threshold in a kind of surly embarrassment.

“I reckon this is Colonel Starbottle,” he said at last, glancing gloomily round him, as if the interview was not entirely of his own seeking. “Well, I’ve seen you often enough, though you don’t know me. My name’s Jo Corbin. I guess,” he added, still discontentedly, “I have to consult you about something.”

“Corbin?” repeated the Colonel in his jauntiest manner. “Ah! Any relation to old Maje Corbin of Nashville, sir?”

“No,” said the stranger briefly. “I’m from Shelbyville.”

“The Major,” continued the Colonel, half closing his eyes as if to follow the Major into the dreamy past, “the old Major, sir, a matter of five or six years ago, was one of my most intimate political friends,—in fact, sir, my most intimate friend. Take a chyar!”

But the stranger had already taken one, and during the Colonel’s reminiscence had leaned forward, with his eyes on the ground, discontentedly swinging his soft hat between his legs. “Did you know Tom Frisbee, of Yolo?” he asked abruptly.

“Er—no.”

“Nor even heard anything about Frisbee, nor what happened to him?” continued the man, with aggrieved melancholy.

In point of fact the Colonel did not think that he had.

“Nor anything about his being killed over at Fresno?” said the stranger, with a desponding implication that the interview after all was a failure.

“If—er—if you could—er—give me a hint or two,” suggested the Colonel blandly.

“There wasn’t much,” said the stranger, “if you don’t remember.” He paused, then rising, he gloomily dragged his chair slowly beside the table, and taking up a paperweight examined it with heavy dissatisfaction. “You see,” he went on slowly, “I killed him—it was a quo’ll. He was my pardner, but I reckon he must have drove me hard. Yes, sir,” he added with aggrieved reflection, “I reckon he drove me hard.”

The Colonel smiled courteously, slightly expanding his chest under the homicidal relation, as if, having taken it in and made it a part of himself, he was ready, if necessary, to become personally responsible for it. Then lifting his empty glass to the light, he looked at it with half closed eyes, in polite imitation of his companion’s examination of the paper-weight, and set it down again. A casual spectator from the window might have imagined that the two were engaged in an amicable inventory of the furniture.

“And the—er—actual circumstances?” asked the Colonel.

“Oh, it was fair enough fight. THEY’LL tell you that. And so would HE, I reckon—if he could. He was ugly and bedev’lin’, but I didn’t care to quo’ll, and give him the go-by all the time. He kept on, followed me out of the shanty, drew, and fired twice. I”—he stopped and regarded his hat a moment as if it was a corroborating witness—“I—I closed with him—I had to—it was my only chance, and that ended it—and with his own revolver. I never drew mine.”

“I see,” said the Colonel, nodding, “clearly justifiable and honorable as regards the code. And you wish me to defend you?”

The stranger’s gloomy expression of astonishment now turned to blank hopelessness.

“I knew you didn’t understand,” he said, despairingly. “Why, all THAT was TWO YEARS AGO. It’s all settled and done and gone. The jury found for me at the inquest. It ain’t THAT I want to see you about. It’s something arising out of it.”

“Ah,” said the Colonel, affably, “a vendetta, perhaps. Some friend or relation of his taken up the quarrel?”

The stranger looked abstractedly at Starbottle. “You think a relation might; or would feel in that sort of way?”

“Why, blank it all, sir,” said the Colonel, “nothing is more common. Why, in ‘52 one of my oldest friends, Doctor Byrne, of St. Jo, the seventh in a line from old General Byrne, of St. Louis, was killed, sir, by Pinkey Riggs, seventh in a line from Senator Riggs, of Kentucky. Original cause, sir, something about a d–d roasting ear, or a blank persimmon in 1832; forty-seven men wiped out in twenty years. Fact, sir.”

“It ain’t that,” said the stranger, moving hesitatingly in his chair. “If it was anything of that sort I wouldn’t mind,—it might bring matters to a wind-up, and I shouldn’t have to come here and have this cursed talk with you.”

It was so evident that this frank and unaffected expression of some obscure disgust with his own present position had no other implication, that the Colonel did not except to it. Yet the man did not go on. He stopped and seemed lost in sombre contemplation of his hat.