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Copyricut, 1894, BY BRET HARTE.
“! What happened immediately’ there-
- after, during his solitary ride to Santa
‘Inez, looking -back upon it, in after
Years, seemed but a confused recollec-
tion, more like a dream. The Joag
~ stretches rot vague distance gradually
opening clearer with : the rising sun
“nan Bnelouded sky, the meeting’ with
a few early. or travelers and
his unconscious mroldence of them,
if’ they might know of his object, ‘the
©. black shadows of foreshortened cattle
rising before him on the plain and
arousing the same uneasy sensation of
ad long been familiar with,
his’ purposeless attempts to recall the
cireumstances in which he had known
them—-all these were like a dream.’ So,
too, were the recollections of the
‘night before, the episode with Susy,
already mingled and blended with the
however, abandoned
with relief at the thought that the
“next few hours might make them un-
ecessary. So, also, was the sudden
~ realization that Santa Inez was before
him, when he had thought’ he was not
yet half way there, and as he dismount-
ed before the courthouse his singular
wed, however, by no fear
e had come so early
~ to the rendezrous that he was not yet
quite prepared for it.
This same sense of unreality per-
valed his’ meeting with the deputy
~» sheriff; the news that the federal judge
had, as was expected, dismissed’. the
prisoners on their own recognizance,
and that Capt. Pinckney was at the
botél at breakfast... In © the like ab-
‘ stract manner he replied to the one or
two questions of the deputy, exhibited
the pistols he had brought with him
* and finally accompanied him to a little
meadow hidden by trees below the hotel,
where the other principal and his see:
onds were awaiting them. And here
he nvokel—eleareyed keen, forceful
and intense!
So stimulated were his faculties that
between the seconds, afew paces dis-
tant, - He heard his adversary’s second
ray earelessly to the deputy sheriff: “1
resume this is a casé where there will
be no apology or mediation,” and the
deputy’s reply; “I reckon my man
“means business, but he seems a fittie
queer.” He heard the other second
laugh and say lightly: “They’re apt to
be so when it’s their first time out,”
followed by the more anxious aside of
the other second as the deputy turned
way: “Yes, but by G—d i don’t like
* his looks!” Lis sense of sight was also
fo acute that having lost the choice of
_ position, when the coin was tossed and
being turned with his face to the sun,
even through its glare he saw witb un-
cern distinctness of outline the black-
ated figure of his opponent moved
: “into range, saw the perfect outline of
Tum. t his nerves become as
steel as the countering began, and at
the word “three” knew he had fired by
the recoil of the pistol in his Jevelea
hand ~ simultaneously with its utter-
ance. And at the same moment, still
standing like a rock, he saw his ad-
versary miscrably collapse, his legs
grotesquely curving inward under him,
without even the dignity of death in bis
fall, and so sink helplessly like a felled
be Story -
sUNDAY TIMES AND GLOBEIOURNAL SUPPLEMENT. .
ull to the ground. Still erect, and
lowering only the muzzle of his pistol,
a thin feather of smoke curled up
its shining side, he saw the doctor and
seconds run quickly to the heap, try to
lift its limp impotence into shape, and
let it “drop ‘again with the words:
“Right through the forehead, by G—d!"
“You've done for him,” said the
turning to Clarence with a
singular look ‘of euriosity, “and 1
reckon you'd better get out of this
mighty quick! ° They didn’ texpect it—
they’re just. ragin’, they may round on
you—and”—he ded more slowly—
“they seem to have just 3 fourd out who
you ar el”
Even while he was speakir g,Clarence
with ‘his quickened ears heard « the
words, “one of Hamilton Brint’s pups.”
“Just like his father,” from the grou
around the dead man.
fate but walked coolly toward them,
Yet a certain ‘fierce pride—whieht
bad never known before—stirred in his
veins, as their voices hushed and they
half recoiled before him.
“Am \ to understand from my sec-
ond, Dtlemen,” he said, looking
around the group, “that you are not
satisfied?”
“The fight was square enough,” said
Pinckney’s second, in some embarrass-
ment, ‘but I reckon that he”-pointing
to the dead man— “did not know who
Do you mean ‘that! he did not kn
that I was the son of aman proficient
in the use of arms?” — -
“I reckon that’s about it,” returned
the second, glancing at the others.
“lam to say, sir, that I havea
better opinion of his courage,” said
Clarence, ‘lifting his ust to the dead
body, as he turne: vay.
Yet he was conscious of no remorse,
concern or even pity in his act. . Per-
haps this was visible in his face, for the
group appeared awed by this perfection
of the duelist’s coolness, and even re-
turned his: formal parting salutation
with a vague and timid respect. Ie
thanked the deputy, regained the hotel,
saddled his horse and galloped away.
Dut not toward the rancho. Now that
he could think of his future, that had
no place in his reflections; even the epi-
sode of Susy was forgotten in the new
and strange conceptions of himself and
his irresponsibility which had come ve
on him with the killing of Pinckney and
the words of his secon s his
dead father who had etitfened his arm
and directed the fatal shot! It was the
hereditary influence—which others had
been so quick to recognize—that had
brought about this completing climax
of his fronble Hiw else could he ac-
count for it that he, a conscientious,
peaceful, sensitive man, tender and for-
giving as he believed himself to be,
could now feel so little sorrow or com-
punction for his culminating act? He
had read of successful duelists who
were haunted by remorse for their first
victim; who retained a terrible con-
sclousness of ihe appearance of the
dead man;’ he had no such feeling; he
had only a tentment in the
wiped out inemeient life, and contempt
for the limp and helpless body. He sud-
denly recalled the callousness us a boy,
when face to face with the victims of
the Indian massacre his sense of fas-
tidious superciliousness,in the’ discov-
ery of the body of Susy’s mofher—
surely it was the cold blood of his father
influencing him ever thus. What ha:
he to do with affection, with domestic
happiness, with the ordinary ambitions
of man’s life, whose blood was frozen at
its source! Yet even with this very
DUBUQUE, Tow.
He did not hesi- -
4
A, AUG. 7, 1898.
thought came once more the old incon-
sistent tenderness he had as a boy Jav-
ished upon the almost unknown and
fugitive father who had forsaken his
ildi. i id remem-
‘even while the pious padres at San Jose
were endeavoring to eliminate this ter-
rible poison from his blood and combat
his hereditary instinct in his conflicts
with his school fellows. And it wasa
part of his inconsistency that, riding
away from the scene of his first blood-
shed, his eyes were dimmed with moist-
ure, not for the victim, but for the one
being whom he believed had impelled
him to the act. .
This and more was in his mind during
his jong ride to Fair Plains, his jour-
bey by coach to Embascadero, his mid-
i)
Tris ay
2 =
“
“You've done for bim,” said the deputy.
night passage across the dark waters of
Francisco—but what should be his
ee was still unsettled,
s he wound around the crest of Rus-
sian hil] and looked down again upon
the awakened city he was startled to
see that it was fluttering and streaming
with bunting! From every public
building and hotel; from the roofs of
private houses, and even the windows
of jonely dwellings flapped and waved
the striped and starry banner, The
steady breath of the sea carricd it out
frora masts and yards of ships at their
wharves—from the battlements of the
forts at Aleatez and Yerba Buena, He
remembered that the ferrymen had told
him that thenews from Fort Sumterhad
swept the city with a convulsion of pa-
triotic sentiment, and that there was
no doubt that the state was saved to
the union. [le looked down upon it with
baggard and bewildered eyes—and then
a’ strange gasp and fullness of his
throat! For afar a solitary -bugle had
blow—the “reveille” at Fort Alcatrez!
4
fu-
Night at last, and the stirand tumult
of a great night over. Even excite-
ment that had swept this portion of
the battlefield—only a small section of
a vaster area of struggle—into which
a brigade had marched held its own,
been beaten back, recovered its ground,
and pursuing, had passed out of it for-
ever, leaving only its dead behind and
mowing nothing more of that strug-
gle than its own impact and momen-
tum—even this wild excitement had
| Jong since evaporated with thestinging
smoke of gunpowder, the acrid smell
ef burning*rags from the clothing of
dead soldier fired by a bursting shell,
or the heated reek of sweat and leather.
Acool breath, that seemed to bring back
once more the odor of the upturned
earthworks along the now dumb line
of battle, began to move from the sug-
‘gestive darkness beyond
But into that awful penetralia of
death and silence there was now no in-
vasion—there had been no retreat.
few of the wounded had been brought
-out, under fire, but the others had been
ieft with the dead for the morning light
and succor. For it was known that in
that horrible obscurity riderless horses,
frantic with the smell of blood, gal-
loped wildly here and there, or, mad-
dened by” wounds, plunged furiously
>
NUMBER 15
at the intruder, that the wounded sol-
dier, still armed, could not always dis-
tinguish friend from foe'6r.from the
ghouls of camp followers who stripped
the dead in the darkness, and struggled
i A shot or two heard
as nothing with the long fusillade that
had swept it in the daytime; the pass-
ing of a single life, more
amounted to little in the long rotleatl
of the day’s slaughter.
But with the first beams of the morn-
ing sun—and the slowly moving “relief
detail” from the cam, me a weird -
half resurrection of that ghastly field. ~
Then it was that the long rays of sun-
light, streaming many. a mile beyond
the battle line, first pointed out the
harvest of the dead where the reserves
had been posted. There they lay in
heaps and piles, killed by solid shot or
bursting shells that hud ‘leaped the
battle line to plunge into the waiting
ranks beyond. As theeun lifted higher
its beams fell within the range of mus-
ketry fire where the dead lay thicker—
even as they had fallen when killed
outright—with arms extended, and feet .;
at all angles to the field. As it touched’:
these dead upturned faces, strangely
enough it brought out no expression of
pain nor anguish, but rather as if *
death had arrested them only with sur-
prise and awe. It revealed on the lips ©
of :those who had been mortally -
wounded and had turned upon their
side the relief which death had brought
their suffering, sometimes even with a
smile. Mounting higher, it glanced
upon the actual battle linc, curiously
curving for the shelter of walls, fences
and breastworks—and here the dead
Jay, even as when they had lain and
a, their faces prone in the grass,
but their muskets still resting across
ie breastworks. - Exposed to grape
and canister from the battery on the
ridge, death had come to them merci-
fully also—through the head and
throat. “And now the whole field lay
bare in the sunlight—broken with gro-
tesque shadows cust from - sitting,
crouching, half-recumbent, but always »
rigid, figures, that might hare been
effigies of their own monuinents. One
half-knécling soldier, with head bowed
between his stiffened hands, might
have stood for a carven figure of grief
at the feet of his dead comrade. ; A
captain shot through the brain in the
act of mounting a wall lay sideways
half across it, his lips parted with the
word of command, and the sword still .
pointing over the barrier the way thats,
they should go.
But it was not until the sun Ind
mounted higher that it struck the cen- *
tral horper of the field and seemed to
linger there in dazzling persistencenow
and then returning to it in startling
flashes, that it might be seen of men
and those who brought succor. Ati:
brook bad run obliquely near the battle
line. - It was here that the night before
the battle friend and foe had filled their
canteens side by side with soldierly
recklessness, or perhaps‘ higher, in-
stinct, purposely ignoring each other's
presence; it was here that the wounded
had’ afterwards: ‘crept, crawled and
dragged themselves, here they) had
pushed, wrangled, striven and fouzht
for a draft of that precious fluid which
assuaged the thirst of their wounds—or
happily put them out of their misery
forever; here, overborne, crushed, suifo-
cated by numbers, pouring their own
blood into the flood and tumbling after
it with their helpless bodies, they
dammed the stream, until, recoiling, red.
and angry, it had burst its banks and
overflowed the cotton field in a brave
pool now sparkling in the sunlight
Bat below this human dam—a mi
away—where the brook still erept s] tee
gishly, the ambulance horsessniffedand
started from it.
The detail moved on slowly, doing
their work expeditiously and apparent-
ly caNlously, but really only with that
mechanical movement that sayes emo-
tion. Only once were they moved toan
outbreak of indignation—the discovery
of the body of an officer whose pochets
were turned inside out, but whose hand
was still tightly grasped on his but-
toned waistcoat, as if resisting the out-
rage that had been done while still in
life. As the men disengaged the stiff
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