Crooked River (17 page)

“That savage's nothin’ but an outright liar!”

A big, pork-faced woman stood up and hollered so suddenly, I nearly jumped out of my skin. The judge had to pound his gavel for quiet, and he ordered the sheriff to take the woman out of the cabin. It took two men to pull her out by her elbows, shouting and hollering the whole time.

Once the room grew quiet again, Peter Kelley asked the interpreter to repeat what he said. I looked over at the jury men.

I couldn't tell what they thought of Indian John's story by the expression on their faces. Vinegar Bigger was cleaning his fingernails with a penknife, and the Hoadley brothers were slouched so far down in their chairs, they looked half asleep. Only Mr. Hawley seemed to be watching the proceedings with a careful
eye. Did he believe what Indian John was saying? I wondered.

After the interpreter finished, some people in the crowd coughed loudly and shifted in their seats. An uneasy feeling had entered the cabin. It made me think of when Pa and the men played a game of cards—how the room would become suddenly tense and warm, and someone would get up to throw open a window or two.

In the front of the room, Peter Kelley folded the papers in his hand. “That was all I wanted the jury to hear, Your Honor,” he said in a firm voice. “I wanted them to listen to Amik's own account of the events and consider carefully what he said.”

Mr. Kelley's final, determined words seemed to stay in the air even after he sat down. I was real proud of him.

The judge nodded at Augustus Root.

With his hands clasped behind his back, Mr. Root took his time walking toward the witness chair, and he gazed rudely at Indian John for a few minutes. As if he was an exhibition that had come to town.

Sweeping his arm toward the jury, he said in a stinging voice to Indian John, “You expect the good hardworking gentlemen of this jury to believe you are a friend of the white man? A friend?” his voice mocked. “Yesterday you painted your face with the stripes of a savage, today you sit before us wearing the ornaments of a savage, speaking the language of a savage.”

I could feel a lump rising fast in my throat, and I tried to brush away the angry tears that were filling up my eyes. My Pa put the stripes on Indian John's face. My own Pa.

But dreadful Mr. Root kept on.

“You expect the jury to believe that two white trappers trespassed on
your
river—what was it called?” Mr. Root looked at the paper in his hand. “Ah yes, the Old River of Many Fish.” He grinned at the crowd. “You say the two trappers came to this river of yours, stole your worthless traps, took what you had caught, and that gave you the absolute right to put a tomahawk into the skull of one of them, am I right?”

Shaking sobs had begun to fill my whole chest, so I could hardly take a full breath.

In the front, Peter Kelley jumped up to object to the questions. “The defendant testified he did not kill the trapper, Your Honor,” he hollered at the judge.

“Quite right.” Mr. Root waved his papers in the air. “You're correct, Mr. Kelley. The savage testified that he sat in his tent all night in peace toward the white man while his Indian friend killed the trapper with a tomahawk.”

I could hold back the tears no longer. As some of the men clapped and stomped their approval for Mr. Root, Laura whispered that if I couldn't keep hold of myself, I had best take Mercy and get outside before someone noticed me. Clinging to Mercy's little hand, I fled from the cabin.

Outside, it had stopped raining for a time. The pale green-leafed trees dripped water like wet wash on a line, and the gray clouds scudded across the sky. I took a deep, shuddering gulp of air, trying to forget the scene inside.

“You want to throw sticks?” I said to Mercy. “We'll go into the woods and throw sticks, how about that?”

For an hour or more, we hurled sticks at the trees. More often than not, Mercy's would fall only a few steps in front of her own feet, but mine would land hard and angry-sounding against the trees. Mercy laughed at the sight, and that made me feel some better.

By and by, Laura came out to find us. Standing on a dry patch of ground, she said the lawyers were giving their final speeches to conclude the trial and Peter Kelley had spoken real well. She told me she heard a few folks whispering that he had given a daring speech for as young as he was.

I wiped my hands on my apron. “Daring?”

“He told the jury that there were good Indians and bad Indians, the same as white people or any other people,” Laura repeated. “And he said that the men in the jury were sworn to give Indian John as fair and full a trial as any white man. He told the men that no human life, not even an Indian's, ought ever to be taken away unless the accused was guilty of the crime. And the evidence proved without one shred of doubt that Indian John was as innocent as any one of them.”

“You think the jury will believe him?” I asked, wanting to believe they surely would.

Laura was silent, looking out at the woods. “I don't know, Reb,” she said uncertainly. “Perhaps after what he said, perhaps they might. It was a brave speech to give, it was. But I don't know.”

The jury would meet and give their verdict the next day, Laura said. And then the whole terrible business of the trial would finally be done.

The jury deliberated inside Mr. Perry's store the next day. As the noonday hour crept closer, people began to gather outside the store, waiting to hear the outcome. More than a few of the men had brought their jugs of whiskey to toast the death of the Indian, they said. But I prayed hard that they were going to be proved wrong.

Me and Laura sat on a blanket in the shadow of the store, near Mr. Perry's woodpile. Mercy played with her yarn doll next to us. “He's innocent and the jury will see that, won't they?” I whispered to Laura for the hundredth time, and she said she hoped they would.

Mrs. Hawley came over and settled down next to us with her new little baby. “It's a trying day, isn't it?” Mrs. Hawley sighed. “Waiting for all the men.” She
smoothed her baby's straw-colored hair. He was a scrawny, squalling little thing.

Even in front of kindhearted Mrs. Hawley me and Laura didn't dare to say what we thought about the trial. We just nodded politely and said it was a long wait, especially with all of the work left to be done.

Mrs. Hawley cast a look toward the store and shook her head. “I wish my husband wasn't even on that jury. He doesn't have any grudges against the Indians,” she said softly. “It's the white man's word against the Indian's word, that's what my husband says—and who can decide which one to believe or what to do?”

I wondered if Mrs. Hawley's husband believed Indian John was innocent. Mr. Hawley was a quiet sort of man who seemed to do more thinking than most folks, so I hoped that he did.

Glancing over at Mercy, Mrs. Hawley turned her words in another direction. “Your little sister's growing up real fast, isn't she?” she said, and we agreed that she was.

When it was past noon, the doors of Mr. Perry's store finally opened. The whole crowd outside the store fell silent, seeing the jury men come out of the building one by one. I watched the men walk to a row of planks that had been set up for them as seats. The men didn't look to the right or left but kept their eyes to the ground. In the hushed silence, Mrs. Hawley's baby started screaming, and a trembling chill began inside me.

Judge James R. Noble and the sheriff followed the jury. The judge's black robes flapped around him like
dark crow's wings. Close behind him came Augustus Root and Peter Kelley. At the sight of Peter Kelley's pale and drawn face, Laura's hand flew to cover her mouth and my throat tightened as if I would be sick. Mr. Kelley paused next to the judge's table with Augustus Root, and I could see his hands rolling and unrolling the brim of the hat he held. His face was the color of ashes.