My Favorite Murder
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 sobriquet89 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 gentleman
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
Achillis90 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,
crescendo91 in approach and
diminuendo92 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
grâce,93 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.”