Colonel Starbottle\'s Client and Other Stories

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COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT


By Bret Harte




CONTENTS


COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT

THE POSTMISTRESS OF LAUREL RUN

A NIGHT AT "HAYS"

JOHNSON'S "OLD WOMAN"

THE NEW ASSISTANT AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL

IN A PIONEER RESTAURANT

A TREASURE OF THE GALLEON

OUT OF A PIONEER'S TRUNK

THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE




COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S CLIENT.


CHAPTER I.


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.

The Colonel leaned back in his chair, fanned himself elegantly, wiped
his forehead with a large pongee handkerchief, and looking at his
companion, whose shadowed abstraction seemed to render him impervious to
the heat, said:--

"My dear Mr. Corbin, I perfectly understand you. Blank it all, sir,
the temperature in this infernal hole is quite enough to render any
confidential conversation between gentlemen upon delicate matters
utterly impossible. It's almost as near Hades, sir, as they make
it,--as I trust you and I, Mr. Corbin, will ever experience. I propose,"
continued the Colonel, with airy geniality, "some light change and
refreshment. The bar-keeper of the Magnolia is--er--I may say, sir,
facile princeps in the concoction of mint juleps, and there is a back
room where I have occasionally conferred with political leaders at
election time. It is but a step, sir--in fact, on Main Street--round the
corner."

The stranger looked up and then rose mechanically as the Colonel resumed
his coat and waistcoat, but not his collar and cravat, which lay limp
and dejected among his papers. Then, sheltering himself beneath a
large-brimmed Panama hat, and hooking his cane on his arm, he led the
way, fan in hand, into the road, tiptoeing in his tight, polished boots
through the red, impalpable dust with his usual jaunty manner, yet
not without a profane suggestion of burning ploughshares. The stranger
strode in silence by his side in the burning sun, impenetrable in his
own morose shadow.

But the Magnolia was fragrant, like its namesake, with mint and herbal
odors, cool with sprinkled floors, and sparkling with broken ice on
its counters, like dewdrops on white, unfolded petals--and slightly
soporific with the subdued murmur of droning loungers, who were heavy
with its sweets. The gallant Colonel nodded with confidential affability
to the spotless-shirted bar-keeper, and then taking Corbin by the arm
fraternally conducted him into a small apartment in the rear of the
bar-room. It was evidently used as the office of the proprietor, and
contained a plain desk, table, and chairs. At the rear window, Nature,
not entirely evicted, looked in with a few straggling buckeyes and a
dusty myrtle, over the body of a lately-felled pine-tree, that flaunted
from an upflung branch a still green spray as if it were a drooping
banner lifted by a dead but rigid arm. From the adjoining room the
faint, monotonous click of billiard balls, languidly played, came at
intervals like the dry notes of cicale in the bushes.

The bar-keeper brought two glasses crowned with mint and diademed with
broken ice. The Colonel took a long pull at his portion, and leaned
back in his chair with a bland gulp of satisfaction and dreamily patient
eyes. The stranger mechanically sipped the contents of his glass, and
then, without having altered his reluctant expression, drew from his
breast-pocket a number of old letters. Holding them displayed in his
fingers like a difficult hand of cards, and with something of the air of
a dispirited player, he began:--

"You see, about six months after this yer trouble I got this letter." He
picked out a well worn, badly written missive, and put it into Colonel
Starbottle's hands, rising at the same time and leaning over him as he
read. "You see, she that writ it says as how she hadn't heard from her
son for a long time, but owing to his having spoken once about ME, she
was emboldened to write and ask me if I knew what had gone of him." He
was pointing his finger at each line of the letter as he read it, or
rather seemed to translate it from memory with a sad familiarity. "Now,"
he continued in parenthesis, "you see this kind o' got me. I knew he had
got relatives in Kentucky. I knew that all this trouble had been put in
the paper with his name and mine, but this here name of Martha Jeffcourt
at the bottom didn't seem to jibe with it. Then I remembered that he had
left a lot of letters in his trunk in the shanty, and I looked 'em over.
And I found that his name WAS Tom Jeffcourt, and that he'd been passin'
under the name of Frisbee all this time."

"Perfectly natural and a frequent occurrence," interposed the Colonel
cheerfully. "Only last year I met an old friend whom we'll call Stidger,
of New Orleans, at the Union Club, 'Frisco. 'How are you, Stidger?' I
said; 'I haven't seen you since we used to meet--driving over the Shell
Road in '53.' 'Excuse me, sir,' said he, 'my name is not Stidger, it's
Brown.' I looked him in the eye, sir, and saw him quiver. 'Then I must
apologize to Stidger,' I said, 'for supposing him capable of changing
his name.' He came to me an hour after, all in a tremble. 'For God's
sake, Star,' he said,--always called me Star,--'don't go back on me,
but you know family affairs--another woman, beautiful creature,' etc.,
etc.,--yes, sir, perfectly common, but a blank mistake. When a man once
funks his own name he'll turn tail on anything. Sorry for this man,
Friezecoat, or Turncoat, or whatever's his d----d name; but it's so."

The suggestion did not, however, seem to raise the stranger's spirits
or alter his manner. "His name was Jeffcourt, and this here was his
mother," he went on drearily; "and you see here she says"--pointing
to the letter again--"she's been expecting money from him and it don't
come, and she's mighty hard up. And that gave me an idea. I don't know,"
he went on, regarding the Colonel with gloomy doubt, "as you'll think it
was much; I don't know as you wouldn't call it a d----d fool idea, but I
got it all the same." He stopped, hesitated, and went on. "You see this
man, Frisbee or Jeffcourt, was my pardner. We were good friends up to
the killing, and then he drove me hard. I think I told you he drove me
hard,--didn't I? Well, he did. But the idea I got was this. Considerin'
I killed him after all, and so to speak disappointed them, I reckoned
I'd take upon myself the care of that family and send 'em money every
month."

The Colonel slightly straitened his clean-shaven mouth. "A kind of
expiation or amercement by fine, known to the Mosaic, Roman, and old
English law. Gad, sir, the Jews might have made you MARRY his widow
or sister. An old custom, and I think superseded--sir, properly
superseded--by the alternative of ordeal by battle in the mediaeval
times. I don't myself fancy these pecuniary fashions of settling
wrongs,--but go on."

"I wrote her," continued Corbin, "that her son was dead, but that he and
me had some interests together in a claim, and that I was very glad to
know where to send her what would be his share every month. I thought it
no use to tell her I killed him,--may be she might refuse to take it. I
sent her a hundred dollars every month since. Sometimes it's been pretty
hard sleddin' to do it, for I ain't rich; sometimes I've had to borrow
the money, but I reckoned that I was only paying for my share in this
here business of his bein' dead, and I did it."

"And I understand you that this Jeffcourt really had no interest in your
claim?"

Corbin looked at him in dull astonishment. "Not a cent, of course; I
thought I told you that. But that weren't his fault, for he never
had anything, and owed me money. In fact," he added gloomily, "it
was because I hadn't any more to give him--havin' sold my watch
for grub--that he quo'lled with me that day, and up and called me a
'sneakin' Yankee hound.' I told you he drove me hard."

The Colonel coughed slightly and resumed his jaunty manner. "And
the--er--mother was, of course, grateful and satisfied?"

"Well, no,--not exactly." He stopped again and took up his letters once
more, sorted and arranged them as if to play out his unfinished but
hopeless hand, and drawing out another, laid it before the Colonel. "You
see, this Mrs. Jeffcourt, after a time, reckoned she ought to have MORE
money than I sent her, and wrote saying that she had always understood
from her son (he that never wrote but once a year, remember) that this
claim of ours (that she never knew of, you know) was paying much more
than I sent her--and she wanted a return of accounts and papers, or
she'd write to some lawyer, mighty quick. Well, I reckoned that all
this was naturally in the line of my trouble, and I DID manage to scrape
together fifty dollars more for two months and sent it. But that didn't
seem to satisfy her--as you see." He dealt Colonel Starbottle another
letter from his baleful hand with an unchanged face. "When I got
that,--well, I just up and told her the whole thing. I sent her the
account of the fight from the newspapers, and told her as how her son
was the Frisbee that was my pardner, and how he never had a cent in the
world--but how I'd got that idea to help her, and was willing to carry
it out as long as I could."

"Did you keep a copy of that letter?" asked the Colonel, straitening his
mask-like mouth.

"No," said Corbin moodily. "What was the good? I know'd she'd got the
letter,--and she did,--for that is what she wrote back." He laid another
letter before the Colonel, who hastily read a few lines and then brought
his fat white hand violently on the desk.

"Why, d--n it all, sir, this is BLACKMAIL! As infamous a case of
threatening and chantage as I ever heard of."

"Well," said Corbin, dejectedly, "I don't know. You see she allows that
I murdered Frisbee to get hold of his claim, and that I'm trying to buy
her off, and that if I don't come down with twenty thousand dollars on
the nail, and notes for the rest, she'll prosecute me. Well, mebbe the
thing looks to her like that--mebbe you know I've got to shoulder that
too. Perhaps it's all in the same line."

Colonel Starbottle for a moment regarded Corbin critically. In spite of
his chivalrous attitude towards the homicidal faculty, the Colonel
was not optimistic in regard to the baser pecuniary interests of his
fellow-man. It was quite on the cards that his companion might have
murdered his partner to get possession of the claim. It was true that
Corbin had voluntarily assumed an unrecorded and hitherto unknown
responsibility that had never been even suspected, and was virtually
self-imposed. But that might have been the usual one unerring blunder of
criminal sagacity and forethought. It was equally true that he did not
look or act like a mean murderer; but that was nothing. However, there
was no evidence of these reflections in the Colonel's face. Rather he
suddenly beamed with an excess of politeness. "Would you--er--mind, Mr.
Corbin, whilst I am going over those letters again, to--er--step across
to my office--and--er--bring me the copy of 'Wood's Digest' that lies on
my table? It will save some time."

The stranger rose, as if the service was part of his self-imposed
trouble, and as equally hopeless with the rest, and taking his hat
departed to execute the commission. As soon as he had left the building
Colonel Starbottle opened the door and mysteriously beckoned the
bar-keeper within.

"Do you remember anything of the killing of a man named Frisbee over in
Fresno three years ago?"

The bar-keeper whistled meditatively. "Three years
ago--Frisbee?--Fresno?--no? Yes--but that was only one of his names. He
was Jack Walker over here. Yes--and by Jove! that feller that was here
with you killed him. Darn my skin, but I thought I recognized him."

"Yes, yes, I know all that," said the Colonel, impatiently. "But did
Frisbee have any PROPERTY? Did he have any means of his own?"

"Property?" echoed the bar-keeper with scornful incredulity. "Property?
Means? The only property and means he ever had was the free lunches or
drinks he took in at somebody else's expense. Why, the only chance he
ever had of earning a square meal was when that fellow that was with you
just now took him up and made him his partner. And the only way HE could
get rid of him was to kill him! And I didn't think he had it in him.
Rather a queer kind o' chap,--good deal of hayseed about him. Showed up
at the inquest so glum and orkerd that if the boys hadn't made up their
minds this yer Frisbee ORTER BEEN killed--it might have gone hard with
him."

"Mr. Corbin," said Colonel Starbottle, with a pained but unmistakable
hauteur and a singular elevation of his shirt frill, as if it had become
of its own accord erectile, "Mr. Corbin--er--er--is the distant relative
of old Major Corbin, of Nashville--er--one of my oldest political
friends. When Mr. Corbin--er--returns, you can conduct him to me. And,
if you please, replenish the glasses."

When the bar-keeper respectfully showed Mr. Corbin and "Wood's Digest"
into the room again, the Colonel was still beaming and apologetic.

"A thousand thanks, sir, but except to SHOW you the law if you require
it--hardly necessary. I have--er--glanced over the woman's letters
again; it would be better, perhaps, if you had kept copies of your
own--but still these tell the whole story and YOUR OWN. The claim
is preposterous! You have simply to drop the whole thing. Stop your
remittances, stop your correspondence,--pay no heed to any further
letters and wait results. You need fear nothing further, sir; I stake my
professional reputation on it."

The gloom of the stranger seemed only to increase as the Colonel reached
his triumphant conclusion.

"I reckoned you'd say that," he said slowly, "but it won't do. I shall
go on paying as far as I can. It's my trouble and I'll see it through."

"But, my dear sir, consider," gasped the Colonel. "You are in the hands
of an infamous harpy, who is using her son's blood to extract money
from you. You have already paid a dozen times more than the life of
that d----d sneak was worth; and more than that--the longer you keep on
paying you are helping to give color to their claim and estopping your
own defense. And Gad, sir, you're making a precedent for this sort of
thing! you are offering a premium to widows and orphans. A gentleman
won't be able to exchange shots with another without making himself
liable for damages. I am willing to admit that your feelings--though, in
my opinion--er--exaggerated--do you credit; but I am satisfied that they
are utterly misunderstood--sir."

"Not by all of them," said Corbin darkly.

"Eh?" returned the Colonel quickly.

"There was another letter here which I didn't particularly point out
to you," said Corbin, taking up the letters again, "for I reckoned
it wasn't evidence, so to speak, being from HIS COUSIN, a girl,--and
calculated you'd read it when I was out."

The Colonel coughed hastily. "I was in fact--er--just about to glance
over it when you came in."

"It was written," continued Corbin, selecting a letter more bethumbed
than the others, "after the old woman had threatened me. This here young
woman allows that she is sorry that her aunt has to take money of me on
account of her cousin being killed, and she is still sorrier that she is
so bitter against me. She says she hadn't seen her cousin since he was
a boy, and used to play with her, and that she finds it hard to believe
that he should ever grow up to change his name and act so as to provoke
anybody to lift a hand against him. She says she supposed it must be
something in that dreadful California that alters people and makes
everybody so reckless. I reckon her head's level there, ain't it?"

There was such a sudden and unexpected lightening of the man's face as
he said it, such a momentary relief to his persistent gloom, that the
Colonel, albeit inwardly dissenting from both letter and comment, smiled
condescendingly.

"She's no slouch of a scribe neither," continued Corbin animatedly.
"Read that."

He handed his companion the letter, pointing to a passage with his
finger. The Colonel took it with, I fear, a somewhat lowered opinion of
his client, and a new theory of the case. It was evident that this weak
submission to the aunt's conspiracy was only the result of a greater
weakness for the niece. Colonel Starbottle had a wholesome distrust of
the sex as a business or political factor. He began to look over the
letter, but was evidently slurring it with superficial politeness, when
Corbin said:--

"Read it out loud."

The Colonel slightly lifted his shoulders, fortified himself with
another sip of the julep, and, leaning back, oratorically began to
read,--the stranger leaning over him and following line by line with
shining eyes.


"'When I say I am sorry for you, it is because I think it must be
dreadful for you to be going round with the blood of a fellow-creature
on your hands. It must be awful for you in the stillness of the night
season to hear the voice of the Lord saying, "Cain, where is thy
brother?" and you saying, "Lord, I have slayed him dead." It must be
awful for you when the pride of your wrath was surfitted, and his
dum senseless corps was before you, not to know that it is written,
"Vengeance is mine, I will repay," saith the Lord. . . . It was no use
for you to say, "I never heard that before," remembering your teacher
and parents. Yet verily I say unto you, "Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be washed whiter than snow," saith the Lord--Isaiah i. 18;
and "Heart hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."--My hymn book, 1st
Presbyterian Church, page 79. Mr. Corbin, I pity your feelins at the
grave of my pore dear cousin, knowing he is before his Maker, and you
can't bring him back.' Umph!--er--er--very good--very good indeed," said
the Colonel, hastily refolding the letter. "Very well meaning and--er"--