The Big Sky (8 page)

"What is your name?" asked Beecher.

"Boone Caudill."

"In your own words," said Beecher quietly, "will you tell the court about your fight this morning and the circumstances surrounding it?"

"It's my gun. He stoled it."

"Wait a minute, now. Start at the first."

"I was fixin' my supper-"

"When and where?"

"Night before yistiddy. Down the road a piece."

"The other side of Greenville?"

"I reckon so."

"Go on."

Boone made a little gesture at Bedwell. "He came ridin' up."

"Yes?"

"He gave me his name and asked if he could put up, too."

"Yes?"

"Come mornin', he was gone, and the rifle to boot."

"And so," said Squire Beecher, "when you came upon him today you tried to get your rifle back?"

"Yes "

Eggleston barked, "Objection!"

"Quit coachin' him," ordered Judge Test.

"That's the way it was," Boone said.

"Can you identify the rifle?"

"Ben Mills made it, at Harrodsburg."

Squire Beecher got up. "Your honors," he said, while a frown wrinkled his face, "we believe a motion for dismissal is in order. As to the identification of the gun, the court simply has a contradiction, without supporting evidence on either side. Neither does the charge of assault and battery stand up. There again the court has a contradiction, and the testimony of the sheriff on the one side does nothing to enforce the accusation. The sheriff simply saw the men fighting. Any conclusion he has drawn or implied is pure assumption, without weight before the law. The only thing of actual proof is that a fight took place."

Eggleston had arisen, protesting. "We want to cross-examine the witness."

Judge Test waved them both back. "Go on, then," he said to the prosecutor, but Squire Beecher said, "Wait, your honor. We're not through." His eyes came back to Boone. "Have you any other way of identifying the rifle? Are there any other marks on it, or scratches that would identify it?"

"It's got nary scratch on it."

Squire Beecher rested his chin on his fist. His eyes studied the table in front of him. "Maybe," he said after a pause, "you can establish your claim to the rifle through the horn or pouch." His head came up. "How many bullets in the pouch?"

"There was eleven, and I shot a rabbit. Ten, there would be."

Beecher motioned, and the sheriff brought over the pouch.

Eggleston came and stood over Beecher as Beecher emptied the pouch on the table. "One, two, three ..."

Eggleston broke in, "There's eight. Just eight."

Beecher's hand fumbled in the pouch and came out empty. "Of course," he said to Boone, "anyone who stole
it could have fired it a couple of times, couldn't he?"

Eggleston looked down at Beecher, grinning, and said,

"I ought to object. You're coaching him again." He went back over to his seat, still grinning.

Beecher said, "That's all."

Judge Test's red face turned on Eggleston. "Go on." Eggleston leaned forward toward Boone, like a snake with
a stand on a bird. "How long have you owned this rifle?"

"A spell."

"How long?"

Boone heard the pen scratching as the man at the little table wrote in the big book. It scratched and stopped, and he saw the pen raised, waiting. From the back of the room the man still smiled at him, like someone who was on his side.

"I asked how long. Good Lord, boy, if the rifle is yours you must know how long you've owned it."

"I couldn't rightly say as to that."

"Oh, you couldn't rightly say. Where did you get the rifle, anyway? Is it really yours?"

The pen was scratching again, and stopping again. Boone felt his hands knotted between his knees. His tongue came out and wet his lips.

Eggleston yelled, "Is it?" and pounded on the table with his fist.

"Your honors," Squire Beecher complained, "we object that the questioning amounts to abuse."

"He won't answer."

The judge's red eyes rested on Boone. "Boy, a defendant can't be made to incriminate himself -but I'll have to warn ye, if you don't answer, the jury's most likely to hold it against you."

Boone said, "My pap gave it to me."

The prosecutor's hand fiddled with his chin. After a silence he said, "How old are you, boy?"

"Comin' eighteen."

"You're seventeen then." Eggleston's light eyes studied him. "You're a runaway, aren't you?"

Boone heard Beecher cry "Objection!" and Judge Test answer, "He's cross-examinin'."

"Where you from?"

Boone brought his hands from between his knees and took hold of the bottom of his chair. "St. Louis."

"What are you doing here?"

"Goin' back."

"From where?"

"Around."

"Just around, eh?"

"Reckon so."

The prosecutor looked at the judges, his eyebrows up, making wrinkles in his forehead. "He ought to be held for investigation. Probably a bound boy."

Squire Beecher came forward, and again the yellow queue swung. "The charge is assault and battery. No other accusation is before the court."

"Let's git on with it, first," Judge Test said to Eggleston. "Ready for pleadin'?" There was a little buzz of whispers in the crowd and a shifting of butts on the benches. They sat forward, as if this was what they had been waiting for. While Boone looked, the man in the back nodded his head, as if to say everything would be all right.

"You can come here," Squire Beecher said, not unkindly, and Boone left the witness chair and sat at the table by him.

Beecher got up and stepped over in front of the jury and began to talk. His voice, lighter than Eggleston's, seemed to turn on and off like a spigot as he faced one way and then another. It was a sight, the way his pigtail joggled. Beyond him, through the window, was the tavern and, farther on, the woods against the sky and the sky itself clear and blue as water. Boone made out a bird against it, probably just a buzzard, but sailing free and easy like keeping up was no trick at all. The spigot turned on and off. "Only one man's word . . . No case has been proved . . . All that has been shown, all you can be sure of, is that a fight took place . . . In the circumstances you must resolve the doubt in favor of the defendant . . ." Out beyond the pole everybody was looking at Beecher, except when he pointed, and then the eyes all moved over, as if they were on a string, and bored at Boone. And everybody was listening, too, and sometimes smiling and sometimes frowning, and whispering once in a while. Maybe a man would find it easy enough to listen, to keep his mind to what was being said, if he was out there. Maybe it was right pleasant, watching and listening and not having fingers aimed at you and eyes putting holes through you, knowing you could get up and go any time you wanted to, to St. Louis or wherever. .., this innocent and friendless boy . . ." He didn't want anyone to be friends, unless it was Jim Deakins. And he wasn't a boy, but a man, growed and out on his own. ... ask the jury in its wisdom and mercy to return a verdict of acquittal."

Beecher was sweating when he sat down.

Eggleston lifted himself from his chair and went over toward the jury with his hands in his pockets and his head down. When he got there, though, the hands came out and the head lifted. His voice was loud, so that Boone could hear it plain, if he set himself to listening, no matter how Eggleston faced. Eggleston marched back and forth in front of the jurymen, his arms swinging. Once in a while he turned and pointed and fixed Boone with his whitish eyes, and, when he did, his voice boomed in Boone's ears, saying "ragged rascal" and "plain piece of banditry" and "murderous tramp." When he turned back his words hit the wall first and seemed to run like echoes in the room. Beyond him, - way beyond him, the buzzard was still circling, light as a feather, not moving its wings but just tilting, round and round, with the wind. Words came at Boone again, like rocks being pitched. He felt the eyes on him and his skin trying to be small inside his clothes. "I submit, gentlemen, that you can come to only one verdict, and that is the verdict of guilt." The arm swung over, like a loose limb in the wind. "Look at him! Look him over well! Ask yourselves what a man like this" -a finger pecked at his clothes- "would be doing with a piece like that." Then it was the echo again, bouncing from the wall. "The penalty, gentlemen, I leave to your good judgment."

Eggleston turned around and went to his seat, giving Squire Beecher a smile on the way. Boone reckoned they were pretty good friends outside of court.

Judge Test rapped once. "The jury can retire." They got up, stretching, and filed out. Through the window Boone could see them cross the street and go into the tavern. The crowd began to shuffle out, most of them making for the tavern, too. The Indian arose, his dark face still as set as a picture, and got his blanket closer around his neck and went through the door, letting the moccasins dangle from his hand. The smiling man in the back was among the last to go out. Watching him, Boone saw that he was crippled. One shoulder was withered, and one leg dragged on the floor. He was still smiling as he drew closer, but smiling a fool's smile, Boone could see now, smiling without meaning, out of an idiot's face. Before he passed through the door he turned and stuck his tongue out at Boone. Bedwell tidied his beaver and after a final look around left the courtroom. Judge Test came down from the bench and cut himself a chew of tobacco. He and the sheriff began to chaff.

After while the sheriff said, "This was just a one-drink case." He motioned out the window, to the jury coming from the tavern. Beecher shook his head but didn't say anything.

The jurymen lagged in. Judge Test lifted himself back on the platform and sat at the bench pulling at his dewlaps. The pale judge sat with his jaw in his hand. His eyes opened slowly as the jury tramped by him. The clerk came and sat down before his book.
"Gentlemen, have you come to a decision?"

One of the jurors got up and stood framed in the window, shutting out the woods and the sky and the bird soaring. "We have."

"Let the court hear it."

"Judge, your honor, we say the boy's guilty, but not too orful guilty."

The judge pursed his lips while his red eyes waited on the speaker.

"We figger," said the juror, "that he'll have to work it out, if'n you fine him, so we say about five dollars, or seven days."

Judge Test whispered to the pale judge and they both nodded, and Judge Test said, "Let it be seven days." The clerk's pen scratched in his book. To Eggleston Judge Test added, "That'll give you time enough to run him down."

Boone felt the hand of the sheriff on his arm. "Come along!" Eggleston looked up as they were about to pass him. "Maybe you can get something out of him, sheriff." One cold eye winked. The sheriff said, "Sure." As he passed out the door he said to the little man named Charlie, "Git Little Betsy, will you?"

The jail was a log cabin with a heavy oak door. The sheriff sprang the lock with a rusty key. It was a big lock, as big as a terrapin. For a minute Boone couldn't make things out after he had got inside. Then he saw a plank bunk with a ragged cover on it, and a broken table, on which a half-burned candle was stuck.

A voice outside said, "Here's Betsy." The sheriff said, "Thanks. Watch the door." The door whined as it closed.

The sheriff was a big man, tall and bony, with a look of power about him. Boone hadn't noticed before how stiff his face could be. It was like a rock face, like Pap's when the devil got in him.

"Time we get well acquainted," said the sheriff, "maybe you'll feel more like talkin'." The right hand came away from his side, holding something that for a minute dragged on the floor. "Turn around!"

Boone cried, "You ain't going to whale me, mister!"

Before he had finished, the whip whistled.
 
 

"Giddap, old boy, giddap, giddap."

Jim Deakins timed his words to the pace of the horse under him, kicking the horse's belly when he got too poky. He was over the river at last, after waiting two days for the water to go down and the ferryman's courage to rise. Even then he had had to pay an extra dollar to get the ferryman to put out. His two mules were gone, and the old work wagon. In their place he had a horse and a bit of money in his pocket. "Giddap, giddap."

He hadn't found any trace of Boone yet. No one had seen him. A tall, dark boy? No. Carrying a rifle? No. Seventeen or eighteen, going to St. Louis? Nope. Nope. Ain't seed such a boy. He wondered if the river had got Boone after all. From the shore they had seen the boat turn over and the head bob and then go out of sight, but a man's head was a little thing to see in the water such a piece away. Boone looked strong, and stout-winded as a pup. He was a good swimmer, likely.

Jim had bought his horse after the ferry had put him off, and had ridden down the Indiana shore, looking, but there wasn't anyone to home at the one likely place, and instead of waiting he had returned to the road and struck out, figuring if Boone had got across he was already on his way to St. Louis.

'Seed a boy go by here, mister, last two or three days, goin' west, afoot?"

The man at the cabin dumped his bucket of slop water and stood straight. "Don't reckon I have."

"Alf, we did so, don't you recollect?" There was a woman at the door, talking shrill. The baby in her arms began to cry. Alf scratched his head.

"When might it be, Missus?"

Before she answered, she brought out a breast and gave it to the baby, saying, "There, will you quit your squallin'?" She wiped the hair from her eyes. "Lemme see. Was it yesterday or day before, Alf? I swear, a body gets mixed up on time. What was it, Alf?"

"Time don't matter so much, just so's he went by."

"He did that, didn't he, Alf? You recollect?" She looked at Jim. "He's awful forgetful, but he seed him all right."

Alf said, "A boy, afoot? He don't come to mind." He put the bucket down and looked up and down the road, as if he might see Boone now. "Reckon Ma's right. She's mighty noticin'."