第44章 THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN(7)

The stars at last paled slowly, the horizon lines came back,--a thin streak of opal fire.A solitary bird twittered in the bush beside the spring.Then the back door of the house opened, and the constable came forth, half-awakened and apologetic, and with the bewildered haste of a belated man.His eyes were level, looking for his missing leader as he went on, until at last he stumbled and fell over the now cold and rigid body.He scrambled to his feet again, cast a hurried glance around him,--at the half-opened door of the barn, at the floor littered with trampled hay.In one corner lay the ragged blouse and trousers of the fugitive, which the constable instantly recognized.He went back to the house, and reappeared in a few moments with Ira, white, stupefied, and hopelessly bewildered; clear only in his statement that his wife had just fainted at the news of the catastrophe, and was equally helpless in her own room.The constable--a man of narrow ideas but quick action--saw it all.The mystery was plain without further evidence.The deputy had been awakened by the prowling of the fugitive around the house in search of a horse.Sallying out, they had met, and Ira's gun, which stood in the kitchen, and which the deputy had seized, had been wrested from him and used with fatal effect at arm's length, and the now double assassin had escaped on the sheriff's horse, which was missing.Turning the body over to the trembling Ira, he saddled his horse and galloped to Lowville for assistance.

These facts were fully established at the hurried inquest which met that day.There was no need to go behind the evidence of the constable, the only companion of the murdered man and first discoverer of the body.The fact that he, on the ground floor, had slept through the struggle and the report, made the obliviousness of the couple in the room above a rational sequence.The dazed Ira was set aside, after half a dozen contemptuous questions; the chivalry of a Californian jury excused the attendance of a frightened and hysterical woman confined to her room.By noon they had departed with the body, and the long afternoon shadows settled over the lonely plain and silent house.At nightfall Ira appeared at the door, and stood for some moments scanning the plain; he was seen later by two packers, who had glanced furtively at the scene of the late tragedy, sitting outside his doorway, a mere shadow in the darkness; and a mounted patrol later in the night saw a light in the bedroom window where the invalid Mrs.Beasley was confined.

But no one saw her afterwards.Later, Ira explained that she had gone to visit a relative until her health was restored.Having few friends and fewer neighbors, she was not missed; and even the constable, the sole surviving guest who had enjoyed her brief eminence of archness and beauty that fatal night, had quite forgotten her in his vengeful quest of the murderer.So that people became accustomed to see this lonely man working in the fields by day, or at nightfall gazing fixedly from his doorway.At the end of three months he was known as the recluse or "hermit" of Bolinas Plain; in the rapid history-making of that epoch it was forgotten that he had ever been anything else.

But Justice, which in those days was apt to nod over the affairs of the average citizen, was keenly awake to offenses against its own officers; and it chanced that the constable, one day walking through the streets of Marysville, recognized the murderer and apprehended him.He was removed to Lowville.Here, probably through some modest doubt of the ability of the County Court, which the constable represented, to deal with purely circumstantial evidence, he was not above dropping a hint to the local Vigilance Committee, who, singularly enough, in spite of his resistance, got possession of the prisoner.It was the rainy season, and business was slack; the citizens of Lowville were thus enabled to give so notorious a case their fullest consideration, and to assist cheerfully at the ultimate hanging of the prisoner, which seemed to be a foregone conclusion.