Short Plays

up this story on us about Blanco? Feemy I ain’t put up no story on you. This is a plant: you see if it isn’t. Strapper returns with a Woman. Her expression of intense grief silences them as they crane over one another’s heads to see her. Strapper takes her to the corner of the table. The Elder moves up to make room for her. Blanco Terrified. Sheriff: that woman ain’t real. You take care. That woman will make you do what you never intended. That’s the rainbow woman. That’s the woman that brought me to this. The Sheriff Shut your mouth, will you. You’ve got the horrors. To the Woman. Now you. Who are you? and what are you doing with a horse that doesn’t belong to you? The Woman I took it to save my child’s life. I thought it would get me to a doctor in time. The child was choking with croup. Blanco Strangling, and trying to laugh. A little choker: that’s the word for him. His choking wasn’t real: wait and see mine. He feels his neck with a sob. The Sheriff Where’s the child? Strapper On Pug Jackson’s bench in his shed. He’s makin’ a coffin for it. Blanco With a horrible convulsion of the throat⁠—frantically. Dead! The little Judas kid! The child I gave my life for! He breaks into hideous laughter. The Sheriff Jarred beyond endurance by the sound. Hold you noise, will you. Shove his neckerchief into his mouth if he don’t stop. To the Woman. Don’t you mind him, ma’am: he’s mad with drink and devilment. I suppose there’s no fake about this, Strapper. Who found her? Wagoner Jo I did, Sheriff. There’s no fake about it. I came on her on the track round by Red Mountain. She was settin on the ground with the dead body on her lap, stupid-like. The horse was grazin’ on the other side of the road. The Sheriff Puzzled. Well, this is blamed queer. To the Woman. What call had you to take the horse from Elder Daniels’ stable to find a doctor? There’s a doctor in the very next house. Blanco Mopping his dabbled red crest and trying to be ironically gay. Story simply won’t wash, my angel. You got it from the man that stole the horse. He gave it to you because he was a softy and went to bits when you played off the sick kid on him. Well, I guess that clears me. I’m not that sort. Catch me putting my neck in a noose for anybody’s kid! The Foreman Don’t you go putting her up to what to say. She said she took it. The Woman Yes: I took it from a man that met me. I thought God sent him to me. I rode here joyfully thinking so all the time to myself. Then I noticed that the child was like lead in my arms. God would never have been so cruel as to send me the horse to disappoint me like that. Blanco Just what He would do. Strapper We ain’t got nothin’ to do with that. This is the man, ain’t he? Pointing to Blanco. The Woman Pulling herself together after looking scaredly at Blanco, and then at the Sheriff and at the jury. No. The Foreman You lie. The Sheriff You’ve got to tell us the truth. That’s the law, you know. The Woman The man looked a bad man. He cursed me; and he cursed the child: God forgive him! But something came over him. I was desperate. I put the child in his arms; and it got its little fingers down his neck and called him Daddy and tried to kiss him; for it was not right in its head with the fever. He said it was a little Judas kid, and that it was betraying him with a kiss, and that he’d swing for it. And then he gave me the horse, and went away crying and laughing and singing dreadful dirty wicked words to hymn tunes like as if he had seven devils in him. Strapper She’s lying. Give her the oath, George. The Sheriff Go easy there. You’re a smart boy, Strapper; but you’re not Sheriff yet. This is my job. You just wait. I submit that we’re in a difficulty here. If Blanco was the man, the lady can’t, as a white woman, give him away. She oughtn’t to be put in the position of having either to give him away or commit perjury. On the other hand, we don’t want a horse-thief to get off through a lady’s delicacy. The Foreman No we don’t; and we don’t intend he shall. Not while I am foreman of this jury. Blanco With intense expression. A rotten foreman! Oh, what a rotten foreman! The Sheriff Shut up, will you. Providence shows us a way out here. Two women saw Blanco with a horse. One has a delicacy about saying so. The other will excuse me saying that delicacy is not her strongest holt. She can give the necessary witness. Feemy Evans: you’ve taken the oath. You saw the man that took the horse. Feemy I did. And he was a low-down rotten drunken lying hound that would go further to hurt a woman any day than to help her. And if he ever did a good action it was because he was too drunk to know what he was doing. So it’s no harm to hang him. She said he cursed her and went away blaspheming and singing things that were not fit for the child to hear. Blanco Troubled. I didn’t mean them for the child to hear, you venomous devil. The Sheriff All that’s got nothing to do with us. The question you have to answer is, was that man Blanco Posnet? The Woman No. I say no. I swear it. Sheriff: don’t hang that man: oh don’t. You may hang me instead if you like: I’ve nothing to live for