Tennessees Partner | Page 4

Tennessee
beguiled the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but
illogically concluded the interview in the following words: "And now,

young man, I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your
money. You see your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog,
and your money's a temptation to the evilly disposed. I think you said
your address was San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call." It may be
stated here that Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business
preoccupation could wholly subdue.
This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him, he
made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the
crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Cañon; but at its
farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The
men looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both
self-possessed and independent, and both types of a civilization that in
the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but in the
nineteenth simply "reckless." "What have you got there? - I call," said
Tennessee see, quietly. "Two bowers and an ace," said the stranger, as
quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife. "That takes me,"
returned Tennessee; and, with this gambler's epigram, he threw away
his useless pistol, and rode back with his captor.
It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the
going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that
evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little cañon was stifling with
heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth
faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day and its fierce
passions still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of
the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.
Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above
the express-office stood out staringly bright; and through their
curtainless panes, the loungers below could see the forms of those who
were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this,
etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless,
crowned with remoter passionless stars.
The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a
judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in
their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The
law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement

and personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe in
their hands they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which
they were already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in
their own minds, they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of
any that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be
hanged, on general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of
defense than his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared
to be more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned,
evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. "I
don't take any hand in this yer game," had been his invariable but
good-humored reply to all questions. The Judge - who was also his
captor - for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not shot him "on
sight," that morning, but presently dismissed this human weakness as
unworthy of the judicial mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at
the door, and it was said that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of
the prisoner, he was admitted at once without question. Perhaps the
younger members of the jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming
irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as a relief.
For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a
square face, sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck
"jumper" and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect
under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even
ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpet-bag he
was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and
inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched
had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he
advanced with great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each person
in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed
face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his
complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself,
and thus addressed the Judge: - "I was passin' by," he began, by way