FullReads

It’s gettin’ dark, and I follows them to Ruddy’s. I hides my gun in a bush and knocks on the door. Ruddy comes out showin’ his big teeth and laughin.’ He closes the door behind him.

‘Come for that twenty, Lou?’ says he.

‘Sure,’ says I.

He thinks a minute, then he laughs and turns and flings open the door. ‘Come in,’ he says.

I goes in.

‘Hallo!’ says he, like he was awful surprised. ‘Here’s a friend of yours, Lou. Well, I never!’

I sees Jenny sittin’ in a corner, tied hand and foot. I says, ‘Hallo, Jenny’; she says, ‘Hallo, Lou.’ Then I turns to Ruddy. ‘How about that twenty?’ I says.

‘Well, I’m damned!’ he says. ‘All he thinks about is his twenty. Well, here you are.’

He goes down into his pocket and fetches up a slug, and I pockets it.

‘There,’ says he; ‘you’ve got yours, and I’ve got mine.’

I don’t find nothin’ much to say, so I says, ‘Well, good-night all, I’ll be goin’.’

Then Jenny speaks up. ‘Ain’t you goin’ to do nothin’?’ she says.

“‘Why, Jenny,’ says I ‘what can I do?’

“‘All right for you,’ she says. ‘Turn me loose, Ruddy; no need to keep me tied after that.’

“So I says ‘Good-night’ again and goes. Ruddy comes to the door and watches me. I looks back once and waves my hand, but he don’t make no sign. I says to myself, ‘I can see him because of the light at his back, but he can’t see me.’ So I makes for my gun, finds her, turns, and there’s Ruddy still standin’ at the door lookin’ after me into the dark. It was a pot shot. Then I goes back, and steps over Ruddy into the shack and unties Jenny.

“‘Lou,’ she says, ‘I thought I knowed you inside out. But you fooled me!’

“By reason of the late hour we stops that night in Ruddy’s shack, and that’s all.”

The prisoner, after shuffling his feet uncertainly, sat down.

“Madam,” said the judge, “may I ask you to rise?”

The woman stood up; not unhandsome in a hard, bold way, except for her black eye.

“Madam,” said the judge, “is what the prisoner has told us, in so far as it concerns you, true?”

“Every word of it.”

“The man Ruddy Boyd used violence to make you go with him?”

“He twisted my arm and cramped my little finger till I couldn’t bear the pain.”

“You are, I take it, the prisoner’s wife?”

The color mounted slowly into the woman’s cheeks. She hesitated, choked upon her words. The prisoner sprang to his feet.

“Your honor,” he cried, “in a question of life or death like this Jenny and me we speaks the truth, and nothin’ but the truth. She’s not my wife. But I’m goin’ to marry her, and make an honest woman of her–at the foot of the gallows, if you decide that way. No, sir; she was Ruddy Boyd’s wife.”

There was a dead silence, broken by the sounds of the horses and cows munching their fodder. The foreman of the jury uncoiled slowly.

“Your honor,” he drawled, “I can find it in my heart to pass over the exact married status of the lady, but I cannot find it in my heart to pass over without explanation the black eye which the prisoner confesses to have given her.”

Lou Garou turned upon the foreman like a rat at bay. “That night in the shack,” he cried, “I dreams that Ruddy comes to life. Jenny she hears me moanin’ in my sleep, and she sits up and bends over to see what’s the matter. I think it’s Ruddy bendin’ over to choke me, and I hits out!”

“That’s true, every word of it!” cried the woman. “He hit me in his sleep. And when he found out what he’d done he cried over me, and he kissed the place and made it well!” Her voice broke and ran off into a sob.

The jury acquitted the prisoner without leaving their seats. One by one they shook hands with him, and with the woman.

“I propose,” said the foreman, “that by a unanimous vote we change this court-house into a house of worship. It will not be a legal marriage precisely, but it will answer until we can get hold of a minister after the spring break up.”

The motion was carried.

The last man to congratulate the happy pair was the German Hans. “Wheneffer,” he said, “you need a parrel of flour or something, you comes to me py my store.”