Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/210

204 higher-toned than Sal. We mention no names, but we would like to know what the editor of the 'Messenger' was doing in the counting-room of one of Pete Dumphy's emissaries, at 10 o'clock last evening. Looking up his bank account, eh? What's the size of the figures to-day? You hear us!"

At one o'clock that morning the editor of the "Messenger" fired at the editor of the "Banner," and missed him. At half-past one, two men were wounded by pistol shots in a difficulty at Briggs's warehouse—cause not stated. At nine o'clock, half a dozen men lounged down the main street and ascended the upper loft of Briggs's warehouse. In ten or fifteen minutes, a dozen or more from different saloons in the town, lounged as indifferently in the direction of Briggs's, until, at half-past nine, the assemblage in the loft numbered fifty men. During this interval a smaller party had gathered, apparently as accidentally and indefinitely as to purpose, on the steps of the little two-story brick court-house in which the prisoner was confined. At ten o'clock, a horse was furiously ridden into town, and dropped exhausted at the outskirts. A few moments later a man hurriedly crossed the plaza toward the court-house. It was Mr. Jack Hamlin. But the Three Voices had preceded him, and, from the steps of the court-house, were already uttering the popular mandate.

It was addressed to a single man. A man who, deserted by his posse, and abandoned by his friends, had for the last twelve hours sat beside his charge, tireless, watchful, defiant and resolute—Joe Hall, the Sheriff of Calaveras! He had been waiting for his summons, behind barricaded doors, with pistols in his belt, and no hope in his heart; a man of limited ideas and restricted resources, constant only to one intent—that of dying behind those bars in defense of that legal trust which his office, and an extra fifty votes at the election only two months before, had put in his hands. It had perplexed him for a moment that he heard the voices of some of these voters below him clamoring against him, but above their feebler pipe always rose another mandatory sentence, "We command you to take and safely keep the body of Gabriel Conroy;" and, being a simple man, the recollection of the quaint phraseology strengthened him and cleared his mind. Ah me, I fear he had none of the external marks of a hero; as I remember him, he was small, indistincttive, and fidgety, without the repose of strength; a man who at that extreme moment chewed tobacco and spat vigorously on the floor; who tweaked the ends of his scanty beard, paced the floor and tried the locks of his pistols.

Presently he stopped before Gabriel and said, almost fiercely, " You hear that? they're coming." Gabriel nodded.

Two hours before, when the contemplated attack of the Vigilance Committee had been revealed to him, he had written a few lines to Lawyer Maxwell, which he intrusted to the sheriff. He had then relapsed into his usual tranquillity—serious, simple, and when he had occasion to speak, diffident and apologetic. "Are you going to help me?" continued Hall.

"In course," said Gabriel, in quiet surprise, "ef you say so. But don't ye do now't ez would be gettin' yourself into troubil along o' me. I ain't worth it. May be it 'ud be jest as square ef ye handed me over to them chaps out yer allowin' I was a heap o' troubil to you and reckonin' you'd about hed your sheer o' the keer o' me, and kinder passin' me round. But ef you do feel obligated to take keer o' me, ez hevin' promised the jedges and jury" (it is almost impossible to convey the gentle deprecatoriness of Gabriel's voice and accent at this juncture), "why," he added, "I am with ye. I'm thar! You understand me!"

He rose slowly, and with quiet but powerfully significant deliberation placed the chair he had been sitting on back against the wall. The tone and act satisfied the sheriff. The seventy-four-gun ship, Gabriel Conroy, was clearing the deck for action.

There was an ominous lull in the outcries below, and then the solitary lifting up of a single voice, the Potential Voice of the night before! The sheriff walked to a window in the hall and opened it. The besieger and besieged measured each other with a look. Then came the Homeric chaff: "Git out o' that, Joe Hall, and run home to your mother. She's getting oneasy about ye!"

"The h—ll you say! " responded Hall, promptly, "and the old woman in such a hurry she had to borry Al Barker's hat and breeches to come here! Run home, old gal, and don't parse yourself off for a man agin!"

"This ain't no bluff, Joe Hall! Why don't