Having murdered my mother under circumstances
of singular atrocity, I was arrested and put upon
my trial, which lasted seven years. In charging
the jury, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked
that it was one of the most ghastly crimes that he
had ever been called upon to explain away.
At this, my attorney rose and said:
“May it please your Honor, crimes
are ghastly or agreeable only by comparison.
If you were familiar with the details of my client’s
previous murder of his uncle you would discern in his
later offense (if offense it may be called) something
in the nature of tender forbearance and filial consideration
for the feelings of the victim. The appalling
ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent
with any hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not
been for the fact that the honorable judge before whom
he was tried was the president of a life insurance
company that took risks on hanging, and in which my
client held a policy, it is hard to see how he could
decently have been acquitted. If your Honor would
like to hear about it for instruction and guidance
of your Honor’s mind, this unfortunate man,
my client, will consent to give himself the pain of
relating it under oath.”
The district attorney said: “Your
Honor, I object. Such a statement would be in
the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case
is closed. The prisoner’s statement should
have been introduced three years ago, in the spring
of 1881.”
“In a statutory sense,”
said the judge, “you are right, and in the Court
of Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling
in your favor. But not in a Court of Acquittal.
The objection is overruled.”
“I except,” said the district attorney.
“You cannot do that,”
the judge said. “I must remind you that
in order to take an exception you must first get this
case transferred for a time to the Court of Exceptions
on a formal motion duly supported by affidavits.
A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office
was denied by me during the first year of this trial.
Mr. Clerk, swear the prisoner.”
The customary oath having been administered,
I made the following statement, which impressed the
judge with so strong a sense of the comparative triviality
of the offense for which I was on trial that he made
no further search for mitigating circumstances, but
simply instructed the jury to acquit, and I left the
court, without a stain upon my reputation:
“I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee,
Mich., of honest and reputable parents, one of
whom Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in
my later years. In 1867 the family came to California
and settled near Nigger Head, where my father opened
a road agency and prospered beyond the dreams of avarice.
He was a reticent, saturnine man then, though his
increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity
of his disposition, and I believe that nothing but
his memory of the sad event for which I am now on
trial prevents him from manifesting a genuine hilarity.
“Four years after we had set
up the road agency an itinerant preacher came along,
and having no other way to pay for the night’s
lodging that we gave him, favored us with an exhortation
of such power that, praise God, we were all converted
to religion. My father at once sent for his
brother, the Hon. William Ridley of Stockton, and on
his arrival turned over the agency to him, charging
him nothing for the franchise nor plant the
latter consisting of a Winchester rifle, a sawed-off
shotgun, and an assortment of masks made out of flour
sacks. The family then moved to Ghost Rock and
opened a dance house. It was called ‘The
Saints’ Rest Hurdy-Gurdy,’ and the proceedings
each night began with prayer. It was there that
my now sainted mother, by her grace in the dance,
acquired the sobriquet of ‘The Bucking
Walrus.’
“In the fall of ’75 I
had occasion to visit Coyote, on the road to Mahala,
and took the stage at Ghost Rock. There were
four other passengers. About three miles beyond
Nigger Head, persons whom I identified as my Uncle
William and his two sons held up the stage. Finding
nothing in the express box, they went through the passengers.
I acted a most honorable part in the affair, placing
myself in line with the others, holding up my hands
and permitting myself to be deprived of forty dollars
and a gold watch. From my behavior no one could
have suspected that I knew the gentlemen who gave the
entertainment. A few days later, when I went
to Nigger Head and asked for the return of my money
and watch my uncle and cousins swore they knew nothing
of the matter, and they affected a belief that my father
and I had done the job ourselves in dishonest violation
of commercial good faith. Uncle William even
threatened to retaliate by starting an opposition
dance house at Ghost Rock. As ‘The Saints’
Rest’ had become rather unpopular, I saw that
this would assuredly ruin it and prove a paying enterprise,
so I told my uncle that I was willing to overlook
the past if he would take me into the scheme and keep
the partnership a secret from my father. This
fair offer he rejected, and I then perceived that
it would be better and more satisfactory if he were
dead.
“My plans to that end were soon
perfected, and communicating them to my dear parents
I had the gratification of receiving their approval.
My father said he was proud of me, and my mother promised
that although her religion forbade her to assist in
taking human life I should have the advantage of her
prayers for my success. As a preliminary measure
looking to my security in case of detection I made
an application for membership in that powerful order,
the Knights of Murder, and in due course was received
as a member of the Ghost Rock commandery. On
the day that my probation ended I was for the first
time permitted to inspect the records of the order
and learn who belonged to it all the rites
of initiation having been conducted in masks.
Fancy my delight when, in looking over the roll of
membership, I found the third name to be that of my
uncle, who indeed was junior vice-chancellor of the
order! Here was an opportunity exceeding my
wildest dreams to murder I could add insubordination
and treachery. It was what my good mother would
have called ‘a special Providence.’
“At about this time something
occurred which caused my cup of joy, already full,
to overflow on all sides, a circular cataract of bliss.
Three men, strangers in that locality, were arrested
for the stage robbery in which I had lost my money
and watch. They were brought to trial and, despite
my efforts to clear them and fasten the guilt upon
three of the most respectable and worthy citizens of
Ghost Rock, convicted on the clearest proof.
The murder would now be as wanton and reasonless
as I could wish.
“One morning I shouldered my
Winchester rifle, and going over to my uncle’s
house, near Nigger Head, asked my Aunt Mary, his wife,
if he were at home, adding that I had come to kill
him. My aunt replied with her peculiar smile
that so many gentlemen called on that errand and were
afterward carried away without having performed it
that I must excuse her for doubting my good faith
in the matter. She said I did not look as if
I would kill anybody, so, as a proof of good faith
I leveled my rifle and wounded a Chinaman who happened
to be passing the house. She said she knew whole
families that could do a thing of that kind, but Bill
Ridley was a horse of another color. She said,
however, that I would find him over on the other side
of the creek in the sheep lot; and she added that
she hoped the best man would win.
“My Aunt Mary was one of the
most fair-minded women that I have ever met.
“I found my uncle down on his
knees engaged in skinning a sheep. Seeing that
he had neither gun nor pistol handy I had not the heart
to shoot him, so I approached him, greeted him pleasantly
and struck him a powerful blow on the head with the
butt of my rifle. I have a very good delivery
and Uncle William lay down on his side, then rolled
over on his back, spread out his fingers and shivered.
Before he could recover the use of his limbs I seized
the knife that he had been using and cut his hamstrings.
You know, doubtless, that when you sever the tendo
Achillis the patient has no further use of his
leg; it is just the same as if he had no leg.
Well, I parted them both, and when he revived he
was at my service. As soon as he comprehended
the situation, he said:
“’Samuel, you have got
the drop on me and can afford to be generous.
I have only one thing to ask of you, and that is that
you carry me to the house and finish me in the bosom
of my family.’
“I told him I thought that a
pretty reasonable request and I would do so if he
would let me put him into a wheat sack; he would be
easier to carry that way and if we were seen by the
neighbors en route it would cause less remark.
He agreed to that, and going to the barn I got a
sack. This, however, did not fit him; it was
too short and much wider than he; so I bent his legs,
forced his knees up against his breast and got him
into it that way, tying the sack above his head.
He was a heavy man and I had all that I could do to
get him on my back, but I staggered along for some
distance until I came to a swing that some of the
children had suspended to the branch of an oak.
Here I laid him down and sat upon him to rest, and
the sight of the rope gave me a happy inspiration.
In twenty minutes my uncle, still in the sack, swung
free to the sport of the wind.
“I had taken down the rope,
tied one end tightly about the mouth of the bag, thrown
the other across the limb and hauled him up about five
feet from the ground. Fastening the other end
of the rope also about the mouth of the sack, I had
the satisfaction to see my uncle converted into a
large, fine pendulum. I must add that he was
not himself entirely aware of the nature of the change
that he had undergone in his relation to the exterior
world, though in justice to a good man’s memory
I ought to say that I do not think he would in any
case have wasted much of my time in vain remonstrance.
“Uncle William had a ram that
was famous in all that region as a fighter.
It was in a state of chronic constitutional indignation.
Some deep disappointment in early life had soured its
disposition and it had declared war upon the whole
world. To say that it would butt anything accessible
is but faintly to express the nature and scope of
its military activity: the universe was its antagonist;
its methods that of a projectile. It fought
like the angels and devils, in mid-air, cleaving the
atmosphere like a bird, describing a parabolic curve
and descending upon its victim at just the exact angle
of incidence to make the most of its velocity and
weight. Its momentum, calculated in foot-tons,
was something incredible. It had been seen to
destroy a four year old bull by a single impact upon
that animal’s gnarly forehead. No stone
wall had ever been known to resist its downward swoop;
there were no trees tough enough to stay it; it would
splinter them into matchwood and defile their leafy
honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable
brute this incarnate thunderbolt this
monster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in
the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of conquest
and glory. It was with a view to summoning it
forth to the field of honor that I suspended its master
in the manner described.
“Having completed my preparations,
I imparted to the avuncular pendulum a gentle oscillation,
and retiring to cover behind a contiguous rock, lifted
up my voice in a long rasping cry whose diminishing
final note was drowned in a noise like that of a swearing
cat, which emanated from the sack. Instantly
that formidable sheep was upon its feet and had taken
in the military situation at a glance. In a few
moments it had approached, stamping, to within fifty
yards of the swinging foeman, who, now retreating
and anon advancing, seemed to invite the fray.
Suddenly I saw the beast’s head drop earthward
as if depressed by the weight of its enormous horns;
then a dim, white, wavy streak of sheep prolonged
itself from that spot in a generally horizontal direction
to within about four yards of a point immediately
beneath the enemy. There it struck sharply upward,
and before it had faded from my gaze at the place
whence it had set out I heard a horrid thump and a
piercing scream, and my poor uncle shot forward, with
a slack rope higher than the limb to which he was
attached. Here the rope tautened with a jerk,
arresting his flight, and back he swung in a breathless
curve to the other end of his arc. The ram had
fallen, a heap of indistinguishable legs, wool and
horns, but pulling itself together and dodging as
its antagonist swept downward it retired at random,
alternately shaking its head and stamping its fore-feet.
When it had backed about the same distance as that
from which it had delivered the assault it paused
again, bowed its head as if in prayer for victory
and again shot forward, dimly visible as before a
prolonging white streak with monstrous undulations,
ending with a sharp ascension. Its course this
time was at a right angle to its former one, and its
impatience so great that it struck the enemy before
he had nearly reached the lowest point of his arc.
In consequence he went flying round and round in
a horizontal circle whose radius was about equal to
half the length of the rope, which I forgot to say
was nearly twenty feet long. His shrieks, crescendo
in approach and diminuendo in recession, made
the rapidity of his revolution more obvious to the
ear than to the eye. He had evidently not yet
been struck in a vital spot. His posture in the
sack and the distance from the ground at which he
hung compelled the ram to operate upon his lower extremities
and the end of his back. Like a plant that has
struck its root into some poisonous mineral, my poor
uncle was dying slowly upward.
“After delivering its second
blow the ram had not again retired. The fever
of battle burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxicated
with the wine of strife. Like a pugilist who
in his rage forgets his skill and fights ineffectively
at half-arm’s length, the angry beast endeavored
to reach its fleeting foe by awkward vertical leaps
as he passed overhead, sometimes, indeed, succeeding
in striking him feebly, but more frequently overthrown
by its own misguided eagerness. But as the impetus
was exhausted and the man’s circles narrowed
in scope and diminished in speed, bringing him nearer
to the ground, these tactics produced better results,
eliciting a superior quality of screams, which I greatly
enjoyed.
“Suddenly, as if the bugles
had sung truce, the ram suspended hostilities and
walked away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing its
great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropping a bunch
of grass and slowly munching it. It seemed to
have tired of war’s alarms and resolved to beat
the sword into a plowshare and cultivate the arts of
peace. Steadily it held its course away from
the field of fame until it had gained a distance of
nearly a quarter of a mile. There it stopped
and stood with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud
and apparently half asleep. I observed, however,
an occasional slight turn of its head, as if its apathy
were more affected than real.
“Meantime Uncle William’s
shrieks had abated with his motion, and nothing was
heard from him but long, low moans, and at long intervals
my name, uttered in pleading tones exceedingly grateful
to my ear. Evidently the man had not the faintest
notion of what was being done to him, and was inexpressibly
terrified. When Death comes cloaked in mystery
he is terrible indeed. Little by little my uncle’s
oscillations diminished, and finally he hung motionless.
I went to him and was about to give him the coup
de grace, when I heard and felt a succession of
smart shocks which shook the ground like a series
of light earthquakes, and turning in the direction
of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust approaching me
with inconceivable rapidity and alarming effect!
At a distance of some thirty yards away it stopped
short, and from the near end of it rose into the air
what I at first thought a great white bird.
Its ascent was so smooth and easy and regular that
I could not realize its extraordinary celerity, and
was lost in admiration of its grace. To this
day the impression remains that it was a slow, deliberate
movement, the ram for it was that animal being
upborne by some power other than its own impetus, and
supported through the successive stages of its flight
with infinite tenderness and care. My eyes followed
its progress through the air with unspeakable pleasure,
all the greater by contrast with my former terror
of its approach by land. Onward and upward the
noble animal sailed, its head bent down almost between
its knees, its fore-feet thrown back, its hinder legs
trailing to rear like the legs of a soaring heron.
“At a height of forty or fifty
feet, as fond recollection presents it to view, it
attained its zenith and appeared to remain an instant
stationary; then, tilting suddenly forward without
altering the relative position of its parts, it shot
downward on a steeper and steeper course with augmenting
velocity, passed immediately above me with a noise
like the rush of a cannon shot and struck my poor uncle
almost squarely on the top of the head! So frightful
was the impact that not only the man’s neck
was broken, but the rope too; and the body of the
deceased, forced against the earth, was crushed to
pulp beneath the awful front of that meteoric sheep!
The concussion stopped all the clocks between Lone
Hand and Dutch Dan’s, and Professor Davidson,
a distinguished authority in matters seismic, who
happened to be in the vicinity, promptly explained
that the vibrations were from north to southwest.
“Altogether, I cannot help thinking
that in point of artistic atrocity my murder of Uncle
William has seldom been excelled.”