Short Plays

resign promptly before the Lord Chamberlain gets them into trouble.

Dramatis Personae

• Babsy

• Lottie

• Hannah

• Jessie

• Emma

• Elder Daniels

• Blanco Posnet

• Strapper Kemp

• Squinty

• Feemy Evans

• Sheriff Kemp

• The Foreman of the Jury

• Nestor

• Wagoner Jo

• The Woman

• Women; Men; Jurymen; Boys

The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet

A number of women are sitting working together in a big room not unlike an old English tithe barn in its timbered construction, but with windows high up next the roof. It is furnished as a courthouse, with the floor raised next the walls, and on this raised flooring a seat for the Sheriff, a rough jury box on his right, and a bar to put prisoners to on his left. In the well in the middle is a table with benches round it. A few other benches are in disorder round the room. The autumn sun is shining warmly through the windows and the open door. The women, whose dress and speech are those of pioneers of civilisation in a territory of the United States of America, are seated round the table and on the benches, shucking nuts. The conversation is at its height.

Babsy	A bumptious young slattern, with some good looks. I say that a man that would steal a horse would do anything.
Lottie	A sentimental girl, neat and clean. Well, I never should look at it in that way. I do think killing a man is worse any day than stealing a horse.
Hannah	Elderly and wise. I don’t say it’s right to kill a man. In a place like this, where every man has to have a revolver, and where there’s so much to try people’s tempers, the men get to be a deal too free with one another in the way of shooting. God knows it’s hard enough to have to bring a boy into the world and nurse him up to be a man only to have him brought home to you on a shutter, perhaps for nothing, or only just to show that the man that killed him wasn’t afraid of him. But men are like children when they get a gun in their hands: they’re not content till they’ve used it on somebody.
Jessie	A good-natured but sharp-tongued, hoity-toity young woman; Babsy’s rival in good looks and her superior in tidiness. They shoot for the love of it. Look at them at a lynching. They’re not content to hang the man; but directly the poor creature is swung up they all shoot him full of holes, wasting their cartridges that cost solid money, and pretending they do it in horror of his wickedness, though half of them would have a rope round their own necks if all they did was known⁠—let alone the mess it makes.
Lottie	I wish we could get more civilized. I don’t like all this lynching and shooting. I don’t believe any of us like it, if the truth were known.
Babsy	Our Sheriff is a real strong man. You want a strong man for a rough lot like our people here. He ain’t afraid to shoot and he ain’t afraid to hang. Lucky for us quiet ones, too.
Jessie	Oh, don’t talk to me. I know what men are. Of course he ain’t afraid to shoot and he ain’t afraid to hang. Where’s the risk in that with the law on his side and the whole crowd at his back longing for the lynching as if it was a spree? Would one of them own to it or let him own to it if they lynched the wrong man? Not them. What they call justice in this place is nothing but a breaking out of the devil that’s in all of us. What I want to see is a Sheriff that ain’t afraid not to shoot and not to hang.
Emma	A sneak who sides with Babsy or Jessie, according to the fortune of war. Well, I must say it does sicken me to see Sheriff Kemp putting down his foot, as he calls it. Why don’t he put it down on his wife? She wants it worse than half the men he lynches. He and his Vigilance Committee, indeed!
Babsy	Incensed. Oh, well! if people are going to take the part of horse-thieves against the Sheriff⁠—!
Jessie	Who’s taking the part of horse-thieves against the Sheriff?
Babsy	You are. Wait’ll your own horse is stolen, and you’ll know better. I had an uncle that died of thirst in the sagebrush because a Negro stole his horse. But they caught him and burned him; and serve him right, too.
Emma	I have known a child that was born crooked because its mother had to do a horse’s work that was stolen.
Babsy	There! You hear that? I say stealing a horse is ten times worse than killing a man. And if the Vigilance Committee ever gets hold of you, you’d better have killed twenty men than as much as stole a saddle or bridle, much less a horse.
	Elder Daniels comes in.
Elder Daniels	Sorry to disturb you, ladies; but the Vigilance Committee has taken a prisoner; and they want the room to try him in.
Jessie	But they can’t try him till Sheriff Kemp comes back from the wharf.
Elder Daniels	Yes; but we have to keep the prisoner here till he comes.
Babsy	What do you want to put him here for? Can’t you tie him up in the Sheriff’s stable?
Elder Daniels	He has a soul to be saved, almost like the rest of us. I am bound to try to put some religion into him before he goes into his Maker’s presence after the trial.
Hannah	What has he done, Mr. Daniels?
Elder Daniels	Stole a horse.
Babsy	And are we to be turned out of the town hall for a horse-thief? Ain’t a stable good enough for his religion?
Elder Daniels	It may be good enough for his, Babsy; but, by your leave, it is not good enough for mine. While I am Elder here, I shall umbly endeavor to keep up the dignity of Him I