The Jacket (The Star-Rover) Read online

  Not a shot was fired. We made the spring safely, filled our pails, and lay down and took a good drink ourselves. With a full pail in each hand we made the return trip. And still not a shot was fired.

  I cannot remember how many journeys we made—fully fifteen or twenty. We walked slowly, always going out with hands clasped, always coming back slowly with four pails of water. It was astonishing how thirsty we were. We lay down several times and took long drinks.

  But it was too much for our enemies. I cannot imagine that the Indians would have withheld their fire for so long, girls or no girls, had they not obeyed instructions from the whites who were with them. At any rate Jed and I were just starting on another trip when a rifle went off from the Indian hill, and then another.

  “Come back!” mother cried out.

  I looked at Jed, and found him looking at me. I knew he was stubborn and had made up his mind to be the last one in. So I started to advance, and at the same instant he started.

  “You!—Jesse!” cried my mother. And there was more than a smacking in the way she said it.

  Jed offered to clasp hands, but I shook my head.

  “Run for it,” I said.

  And while we hotfooted it across the sand it seemed all the rifles on Indian hill were turned loose on us. I got to the spring a little ahead, so that Jed had to wait for me to fill my pails.

  “Now run for it,” he told me; and from the leisurely way he went about filling his own pails I knew he was determined to be in last.

  So I crouched down, and, while I waited, watched the puffs of dust raised by the bullets. We began the return side by side and running.

  “Not so fast,” I cautioned him, “or you’ll spill half the water.”

  That stung him, and he slacked back perceptibly. Midway I stumbled and fell headlong. A bullet, striking directly in front of me, filled my eyes with sand. For the moment I thought I was shot.

  “Done it a-purpose,” Jed sneered as I scrambled to my feet. He had stood and waited for me.

  I caught his idea. He thought I had fallen deliberately in order to spill my water and go back for more. This rivalry between us was a serious matter—so serious, indeed, that I immediately took advantage of what he had imputed and raced back to the spring. And Jed Dunham, scornful of the bullets that were puffing dust all around him, stood there upright in the open and waited for me. We came in side by side, with honours even in our boys’ foolhardiness. But when we delivered the water Jed had only one pailful. A bullet had gone through the other pail close to the bottom.

  Mother took it out on me with a lecture on disobedience. She must have known, after what I had done, that father wouldn’t let her smack me; for, while she was lecturing, father winked at me across her shoulder. It was the first time he had ever winked at me.

  Back in the rifle pit Jed and I were heroes. The women wept and blessed us, and kissed us and mauled us. And I confess I was proud of the demonstration, although, like Jed, I let on that I did not like all such making-over. But Jeremy Hopkins, a great bandage about the stump of his left wrist, said we were the stuff white men were made out of—men like Daniel Boone, like Kit Carson, and Davy Crockett. I was prouder of that than all the rest.

  The remainder of the day I seem to have been bothered principally with the pain of my right eye caused by the sand that had been kicked into it by the bullet. The eye was bloodshot, mother said; and to me it seemed to hurt just as much whether I kept it open or closed. I tried both ways.

  Things were quieter in the rifle pit, because all had had water, though strong upon us was the problem of how the next water was to be procured. Coupled with this was the known fact that our ammunition was almost exhausted. A thorough overhauling of the wagons by father had resulted in finding five pounds of powder. A very little more was in the flasks of the men.

  I remembered the sundown attack of the night before, and anticipated it this time by crawling to the trench before sunset. I crept into a place alongside of Laban. He was busy chewing tobacco, and did not notice me. For some time I watched him, fearing that when he discovered me he would order me back. He would take a long squint out between the wagon wheels, chew steadily a while, and then spit carefully into a little depression he had made in the sand.

  “How’s tricks?” I asked finally. It was the way he always addressed me.

  “Fine,” he answered. “Most remarkable fine, Jesse, now that I can chew again. My mouth was that dry that I couldn’t chew from sun-up to when you brung the water.”

  Here a man showed head and shoulders over the top of the little hill to the north-east occupied by the whites. Laban sighted his rifle on him for a long minute. Then he shook his head.

  “Four hundred yards. Nope, I don’t risk it. I might get him, and then again I mightn’t, an’ your dad is mighty anxious about the powder.”

  “What do you think our chances are?” I asked, man-fashion, for, after my water exploit, I was feeling very much the man.

  Laban seemed to consider carefully for a space ere he replied.

  “Jesse, I don’t mind tellin’ you we’re in a damned bad hole. But we’ll get out, oh, we’ll get out, you can bet your bottom dollar.”

  “Some of us ain’t going to get out,” I objected.

  “Who, for instance?” he queried.

  “Why, Bill Tyler, and Mrs. Grant, and Silas Dunlap, and all the rest.”

  “Aw, shucks, Jesse—they’re in the ground already. Don’t you know everybody has to bury their dead as they traipse along? They’ve ben doin’ it for thousands of years I reckon, and there’s just as many alive as ever they was. You see, Jesse, birth and death go hand-in-hand. And they’re born as fast as they die—faster, I reckon, because they’ve increased and multiplied. Now you, you might a-got killed this afternoon packin’ water. But you’re here, ain’t you, a-gassin’ with me an’ likely to grow up an’ be the father of a fine large family in Californy. They say everything grows large in Californy.”

  This cheerful way of looking at the matter encouraged me to dare sudden expression of a long covetousness.

  “Say, Laban, supposin’ you got killed here—”

  “Who?—me?” he cried.

  “I’m just sayin’ supposin’,” I explained.

  “Oh, all right then. Go on. Supposin’ I am killed?”

  “Will you give me your scalps?”

  “Your ma’ll smack you if she catches you a-wearin’ them,” he temporized.

  “I don’t have to wear them when she’s around. Now if you got killed, Laban, somebody’d have to get them scalps. Why not me?”

  “Why not?” he repeated. “That’s correct, and why not you? All right, Jesse. I like you, and your pa. The minute I’m killed the scalps is yourn, and the scalpin’ knife, too. And there’s Timothy Grant for witness. Did you hear, Timothy?”

  Timothy said he had heard, and I lay there speechless in the stifling trench, too overcome by my greatness of good fortune to be able to utter a word of gratitude.

  I was rewarded for my foresight in going to the trench. Another general attack was made at sundown, and thousands of shots were fired into us. Nobody on our side was scratched. On the other hand, although we fired barely thirty shots, I saw Laban and Timothy Grant each get an Indian. Laban told me that from the first only the Indians had done the shooting. He was certain that no white had fired a shot. All of which sorely puzzled him. The whites neither offered us aid nor attacked us, and all the while were on visiting terms with the Indians who were attacking us.

  Next morning found the thirst harsh upon us. I was out at the first hint of light. There had been a heavy dew, and men, women, and children were lapping it up with their tongues from off the wagon-tongues, brake-blocks, and wheel-tyres.

  There was talk that Laban had returned from a scout just before daylight; that he had crept close to the position of the whites; that they were already up; and that in the light of their campfires he had seen them praying in a large circle. Also he reported from
what few words he caught that they were praying about us and what was to be done with us.

  “May God send them the light then,” I heard one of the Demdike sisters say to Abby Foxwell.

  “And soon,” said Abby Foxwell, “for I don’t know what we’ll do a whole day without water, and our powder is about gone.”

  Nothing happened all morning. Not a shot was fired. Only the sun blazed down through the quiet air. Our thirst grew, and soon the babies were crying and the younger children whimpering and complaining. At noon Will Hamilton took two large pails and started for the spring. But before he could crawl under the wagon Ann Demdike ran and got her arms around him and tried to hold him back. But he talked to her, and kissed her, and went on. Not a shot was fired, nor was any fired all the time he continued to go out and bring back water.

  “Praise God!” cried old Mrs. Demdike. “It is a sign. They have relented.”

  This was the opinion of many of the women.

  About two o’clock, after we had eaten and felt better, a white man appeared, carrying a white flag. Will Hamilton went out and talked to him, came back and talked with father and the rest of our men, and then went out to the stranger again. Farther back we could see a man standing and looking on, whom we recognized as Lee.

  With us all was excitement. The women were so relieved that they were crying and kissing one another, and old Mrs. Demdike and others were hallelujahing and blessing God. The proposal, which our men had accepted, was that we would put ourselves under the flag of truce and be protected from the Indians.

  “We had to do it,” I heard father tell mother.

  He was sitting, droop-shouldered and dejected, on a wagon-tongue.

  “But what if they intend treachery?” mother asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “We’ve got to take the chance that they don’t,” he said. “Our ammunition is gone.”

  Some of our men were unchaining one of our wagons and rolling it out of the way. I ran across to see what was happening. In came Lee himself, followed by two empty wagons, each driven by one man. Everybody crowded around Lee. He said that they had had a hard time with the Indians keeping them off of us, and that Major Higbee, with fifty of the Mormon militia, were ready to take us under their charge.

  But what made father and Laban and some of the men suspicious was when Lee said that we must put all our rifles into one of the wagons so as not to arouse the animosity of the Indians. By so doing we would appear to be the prisoners of the Mormon militia.

  Father straightened up and was about to refuse when he glanced to Laban, who replied in an undertone. “They ain’t no more use in our hands than in the wagon, seein’ as the powder’s gone.”

  Two of our wounded men who could not walk were put into the wagons, and along with them were put all the little children. Lee seemed to be picking them out over eight and under eight. Jed and I were large for our age, and we were nine besides; so Lee put us with the older bunch and told us we were to march with the women on foot.

  When he took our baby from mother and put it in a wagon she started to object. Then I saw her lips draw tightly together, and she gave in. She was a gray-eyed, strong-featured, middle-aged woman, large-boned and fairly stout. But the long journey and hardship had told on her, so that she was hollow-cheeked and gaunt, and like all the women in the company she wore an expression of brooding, never-ceasing anxiety.

  It was when Lee described the order of march that Laban came to me. Lee said that the women and the children that walked should go first in the line, following behind the two wagons. Then the men, in single file, should follow the women. When Laban heard this he came to me, untied the scalps from his belt, and fastened them to my waist.

  “But you ain’t killed yet,” I protested.

  “You bet your life I ain’t,” he answered lightly.

  “I’ve just reformed, that’s all. This scalp-wearin’ is a vain thing and heathen.” He stopped a moment as if he had forgotten something, then, as he turned abruptly on his heel to regain the men of our company, he called over his shoulder, “Well, so long, Jesse.”

  I was wondering why he should say good-bye when a white man came riding into the corral. He said Major Higbee had sent him to tell us to hurry up, because the Indians might attack at any moment.

  So the march began, the two wagons first. Lee kept along with the women and walking children. Behind us, after waiting until we were a couple of hundred feet in advance, came our men. As we emerged from the corral we could see the militia just a short distance away. They were leaning on their rifles and standing in a long line about six feet apart. As we passed them I could not help noticing how solemn-faced they were. They looked like men at a funeral. So did the women notice this, and some of them began to cry.

  I walked right behind my mother. I had chosen this position so that she would not catch-sight of my scalps. Behind me came the three Demdike sisters, two of them helping the old mother. I could hear Lee calling all the time to the men who drove the wagons not to go so fast. A man that one of the Demdike girls said must be Major Higbee sat on a horse watching us go by. Not an Indian was in sight.

  By the time our men were just abreast of the militia—I had just looked back to try to see where Jed Dunham was—the thing happened. I heard Major Higbee cry out in a loud voice, “Do your duty!” All the rifles of the militia seemed to go off at once, and our men were falling over and sinking down. All the Demdike women went down at one time. I turned quickly to see how mother was, and she was down. Right alongside of us, out of the bushes, came hundreds of Indians, all shooting. I saw the two Dunlap sisters start on the run across the sand, and took after them, for whites and Indians were all killing us. And as I ran I saw the driver of one of the wagons shooting the two wounded men. The horses of the other wagon were plunging and rearing and their driver was trying to hold them.

  * * * * *

  It was when the little boy that was I was running after the Dunlap girls that blackness came upon him. All memory there ceases, for Jesse Fancher there ceased, and, as Jesse Fancher, ceased for ever. The form that was Jesse Fancher, the body that was his, being matter and apparitional, like an apparition passed and was not. But the imperishable spirit did not cease. It continued to exist, and, in its next incarnation, became the residing spirit of that apparitional body known as Darrell Standing’s which soon is to be taken out and hanged and sent into the nothingness whither all apparitions go.

  There is a lifer here in Folsom, Matthew Davies, of old pioneer stock, who is trusty of the scaffold and execution chamber. He is an old man, and his folks crossed the plains in the early days. I have talked with him, and he has verified the massacre in which Jesse Fancher was killed. When this old lifer was a child there was much talk in his family of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The children in the wagons, he said, were saved, because they were too young to tell tales.

  All of which I submit. Never, in my life of Darrell Standing, have I read a line or heard a word spoken of the Fancher Company that perished at Mountain Meadows. Yet, in the jacket in San Quentin prison, all this knowledge came to me. I could not create this knowledge out of nothing, any more than could I create dynamite out of nothing. This knowledge and these facts I have related have but one explanation. They are out of the spirit content of me—the spirit that, unlike matter, does not perish.

  In closing this chapter I must state that Matthew Davies also told me that some years after the massacre Lee was taken by United States Government officials to the Mountain Meadows and there executed on the site of our old corral.

  CHAPTER XIV

  When, at the conclusion of my first ten days’ term in the jacket, I was brought back to consciousness by Doctor Jackson’s thumb pressing open an eyelid, I opened both eyes and smiled up into the face of Warden Atherton.

  “Too cussed to live and too mean to die,” was his comment.

  “The ten days are up, Warden,” I whispered.

  “Well, we’re goin
g to unlace you,” he growled.

  “It is not that,” I said. “You observed my smile. You remember we had a little wager. Don’t bother to unlace me first. Just give the Bull Durham and cigarette papers to Morrell and Oppenheimer. And for full measure here’s another smile.”

  “Oh, I know your kind, Standing,” the Warden lectured. “But it won’t get you anything. If I don’t break you, you’ll break all strait-jacket records.”

  “He’s broken them already,” Doctor Jackson said. “Who ever heard of a man smiling after ten days of it?”

  “Well and bluff,” Warden Atherton answered. “Unlace him, Hutchins.”

  “Why such haste?” I queried, in a whisper, of course, for so low had life ebbed in me that it required all the little strength I possessed and all the will of me to be able to whisper even. “Why such haste? I don’t have to catch a train, and I am so confounded comfortable as I am that I prefer not to be disturbed.”

  But unlace me they did, rolling me out of the fetid jacket and upon the floor, an inert, helpless thing.

  “No wonder he was comfortable,” said Captain Jamie. “He didn’t feel anything. He’s paralysed.”

  “Paralysed your grandmother,” sneered the Warden. “Get him up on his feat and you’ll see him stand.”

  Hutchins and the doctor dragged me to my feet.

  “Now let go!” the Warden commanded.

  Not all at once could life return into the body that had been practically dead for ten days, and as a result, with no power as yet over my flesh, I gave at the knees, crumpled, pitched sidewise, and gashed my forehead against the wall.

  “You see,” said Captain Jamie.

  “Good acting,” retorted the Warden. “That man’s got nerve to do anything.”

  “You’re right, Warden,” I whispered from the floor. “I did it on purpose. It was a stage fall. Lift me up again, and I’ll repeat it. I promise you lots of fun.”

  I shall not dwell upon the agony of returning circulation. It was to become an old story with me, and it bore its share in cutting the lines in my face that I shall carry to the scaffold.