“Well, son, it was a riot! I thought the beak was going to bust something. He’s a big bloated hick with a red face and a pair of nose-pinchers. His face turns purple now, and the cheaters slide down his nose three times in five minutes. The district attorney does a proper war dance with the whoops and all. But we had ’em!”
The old man stopped with an air of finality. I waited a while, but he didn’t resume the story, if there were, indeed, any more to it; so I prodded him.
“I don’t see where that proves your contention,” I said. “There’s no using of the law as a weapon there.”
“Wait, sonny, wait,” he promised. “You’ll see before I’m through... They put their witnesses back on the stand again, then. But there was nothing to it. None of ’em had seen any weapons, and none of ’em couldn’t say we had threatened ’em. They said things about our looks, but it ain’t a crime to be ugly.
“They shut up shop for the day, then, and chased me and Flogger back to the jail. And we went back as happy a pair as you ever seen. We had the world by the tail with a downhill pull, and we liked it. Thirty days, or even sixty, in the county jail on a vag charge didn’t mean nothing to us. We’d had that happen to us before, and got over it.
“We were happy — but that came from the ignorance of our trustin’ natures. We thought maybe a court was a place where justice was done after all; where right was right; and where things went accordin’ to the law. We’d been in trouble with the law before, plenty, but this was different — we had the law on our side this time; and we counted on it stickin’ with us. But—”
“Well, anyway, they take us back over to court after a few more days. And as soon as I get a slant at the beak and the district attorney I get sort of a chill up my back. They got mean lights in their eyes, like a coupla kids that had put tacks on a chair and was a-waiting for somebody to sit on them. Maybe, I think, they’ve rigged things up so’s they can slip us two or three, or even six, months on vag charges. But I didn’t suspect half of it!
“Say, you’ve heard this chatter about how slow the courts are, haven’t you? Well, let me tell you, nothing in the world ever moved any faster than that court that morning. Before we had got fixed in our chairs, almost, things was humming.
“Our kid mouthpiece is bouncing up and down continuous, trying to get a word in. But not a chance! Every time he opens his mouth the beak cracks down on him and shuts him up; even threatening to throw him out and fine him in the bargain if he don’t keep quiet. “The man we’d gone up against in the garage was the proprietor, but the ones in the hock shop and the shoe store were just hirelings. So they leave the garage man out of the game. But they put the other two in the dock, charged with grand larceny, have ’em plead guilty, sentence ’em to five years apiece, and suspend the sentences before you could shift a chew from one cheek to the other. “ ‘If,’ the beak says in answer to our mouthpiece’s squawk, ‘your clients simply asked for the money and these men gave it to them, then these two men are guilty of theft, since the money belonged to their employers. There is nothing for the court to do, therefore but to find them guilty of grand larceny and sentence them to five years each in the state prison. But the evidence tends to show that these men were actuated simply by an overwhelming desire to help two of their fellow men; that they were induced to steal the money simply by an ungovernable impulse to charity. And the court, therefore, feels that it is justified in exercising its legal privilege of leniency, and suspending their sentences.’
“Me and Flogger don’t understand what’s being done to us right away, but our mouthpiece does, and as soon as I get a look at him I know it’s pretty bad. He’s sort of gasping.
“The rest of the dirty work takes longer, but there’s no stopping it. This old buzzard of a judge has our charges changed to ‘receiving stolen property’ — a felony in that state; we are convicted on two counts, and he slips us ten years in the big house on each, the hitches to run end to end.
“And does that old buzzard feel that the court should exercise its legal privilege of leniency and suspend our sentences? Fat chance! Me and Flogger goes over!”
Afraid of a Gun
Black Mask, March 1, 1924
Owen Sack turned from the stove as the door of his cabin opened to admit “Rip” Yust, and with the hand that did not hold the coffeepot Owen Sack motioned hospitably toward the table, where food steamed before a ready chair.
“Hullo, Rip! Set down and go to it while it’s hot. ‘Twon’t take me but a minute to throw some more together for myself.”
That was Owen Sack, a short man of compact wiriness, with round china-blue eyes and round ruddy cheeks, and only the thinness of his straw-colored hair to tell of his fifty-odd years, a quiet little man whose too-eager friendliness at times suggested timidity.
Rip Yust crossed to the table, but he paid no attention to its burden of food. Instead, he placed two big fists on the tabletop, leaned his weight on them, and scowled at Owen Sack. He was big, this Rip Yust, barrel-bodied, slope-shouldered, thick-limbed, and his usual manner was a phlegmatic sort of sullenness. But now his heavy features were twisted into a scowl.
“They got ‘Lucky’ this morning,” he said after a moment, and his voice wasn’t the voice of one who brings news. It was accusing.
“Who got him?”
But Owen Sack’s eyes swerved from the other’s as he put the question, and he moistened his lips nervously. He knew who had got Rip’s brother.
“Who do you guess?” with heavy derision. “The Prohis! You know it!”
The little man winced.
“Aw, Rip! How would I know it? I ain’t been to town for a week, and nobody never comes past here any more.”
“Yeah, I wonder how you would know it.”
Yust walked around the table, to where Owen Sack — with little globules of moisture glistening on his round face — stood, caught him by the slack of his blue shirt bosom and lifted him clear of the floor. Twice Yust shook the little man — shook him with a lack of vehemence that was more forcible than any violence could have been — and set him down on his feet again.
“You knowed where our cache was at,” he accused, still holding the looseness of the shirt bosom in one muscular hand, “and nobody else that ain’t in with us did. The Prohis showed up there this morning and grabbed Lucky. Who told ’em where it was? You did, you rat!”
“I didn’t, Rip! I didn’t! I swear to—”
Yust cut off the little man’s whimpering by placing a broad palm across his mouth.
“Maybe you didn’t. To tell the truth, I ain’t exactly positive yet that you done it — or I wouldn’t be talking to you.” He flicked his coat aside, baring for a suggestive half-second the brown butt of a revolver that peeped out of a shoulder holster. “But it looks like it couldn’t of been nobody else. But I ain’t aiming to hurt nobody that don’t hurt me, so I’m looking around a while to make sure. But if I find out that you done it for sure—”
He snapped his big jaws together. His right hand made as if to dart under his coat near the left armpit. He nodded with slow emphasis, and left the cabin.
For a while Owen Sack did not move. He stood stiffly still, staring with barren blue eyes at the door through which his caller had vanished; and Owen Sack looked old now. His face held lines that had not been there before; and his body, for all its rigidity, seemed frailer.