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O’s Head
by
At first he made some show of denying it, but what could he say with Scanlon and Tautala in risen witness against him? He tried to refuse to come with us (which would have spoiled everything), until Scanlon took a hand in the fray and let his imagination run riot about the law, which, as he was the official representative of it and wore a pewter star on his breast, soon settled To’oto’o’s half-hearted objections. If anything else were wanted, it was the arrival at this juncture of Seumanutafa at the head of a dozen retainers, who added the finishing stroke to the little resistance To’oto’o had left. Then we all started off for the Southern Cross Bakery, and, as we walked slowly and naturally, attracted a good deal of attention; and as we told every one we met where we were going to, and why, we grew and grew until, as I looked down the procession, I couldn’t see the end of it. The Chief Justice was sucked in. Likewise the President. Marquardt, the chief of police, joined us; Haggard, the land commissioner; some Mormon missionaries; two lay brothers from the school; a lot of passengers from the mail boat, with handkerchiefs stuck into their sweaty collars; Captain Hufnagel on horseback, with a small army of Guadalcanaar laborers; half the synod of the Wesleyan church in white lavalavas and hymn-books; a picnic party that had just returned (not wholly sober) from the Papase’ea; blue-jackets from the Sperber ; blue-jackets from the Walleroo ; three survivors of the British bark Windsor Castle, burned at sea; a German scientist in Jaeger costume, with blue spectacles and a butterfly net; six whole boatloads of an aumoenga party from Manu’a; a lot of political prisoners on parole; two lepers, and Charley Taylor!
It was well we had brought Marquardt with us, for he and his police caught the humor of the thing, and on reaching the bakery formed us up in a great hollow square with one side blank for Silver Tongue, who stood and gazed at us transfixed from the shade of his veranda. Then Seumanutafa, Sasa, Scanlon, Tautala, To’oto’o, and I broke ranks and marched up to him.
“Old man,” I said, “if you were to think a year you’d never guess what brought us here to-day!”
“It’s O’s head again,” he said, grinding his teeth and casting a vitriolic glance at To’oto’o, “and if there was any law or order in this Godforsaken land”–he looked daggers at the Chief Justice as he said this–“that fellar would have got short jift for murdering my fader-in-law’s aunt’s son!”
“He didn’t murder him,” I said.
Silver Tongue’s jaw fell. He looked at us quite overcome. For a minute he couldn’t say a word.
“Oh, but he deed!” he said at last.
“It was Tautala that killed him,” I said, indicating the young man we had brought from Mulinu’u, “and it turns out he sold your relation’s head to To’oto’o for seven dollars and a music box.” At this, smiling from ear to ear, Tautala held up the music box to public view, and would have set it going had not something fortunately caught in the works.
“It’s a lie!” gasped Silver Tongue. “It’s a lie!”
“Scanlon himself was at the battle,” I went on, “and he saw the whole thing and was a witness to Tautala getting the seven dollars, and he made To’oto’o pony up four dollars more as the price of his own secrecy.”
“Four dollars,” ejaculated Scanlon. “That’s right, Captain Branscombe. Four dollars!”
“So, if you are angry with anybody,” I said, “you ought to be angry with Tautala. All To’oto’o did was to buy a little cheap notoriety for eleven dollars and a music box.”
I never saw a man so stung in all my life as Oppenstedt. The eyes seemed to start from his head, and he glared at To’oto’o as though he could have strangled him. Tautala was quite forgotten in the intensity of his indignation toward Rosalie’s uncle. You see, he had been hating To’oto’o ferociously for six months, and couldn’t switch off at a moment’s notice on an absolute stranger like Tautala. Besides, his hatred for To’oto’o had become a kind of monomania with him, and now here I was telling him what a fool he had made of himself, and proving it with two witnesses and a music box. No wonder that he was staggered.