“Your Honor! Gentlemen of the Jury! You have heard with what cruelty the prosecution has referred to the sins of this woman, as if her condition was of her own preference. A dreadful—a vicious—a revolting picture has been painted for you of her life and surroundings. Tell me—tell me—do you really think that she willingly embraced a life so repellent, so horrible? No, gentlemen! A thousand times, no! This girl was bred in such luxury, such refinement, as few of us have known. And just as the young girl was budding into womanhood, cruel fate snatched all this from her, bereft her of her dear ones, took from her, one by one, with a terrible and fierce rapidity, those upon whom she had come to look for love and support. And then in that moment of darkest terror and loneliness, came one of our sex, gentlemen. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. A fiend in the guise of a human. False promises. Lies. Deceit so palpable that it would have deceived no one but a young girl as innocent, as pure, as starry eyed as was this woman you now see white and trembling before you. One of our sex was the author of her ruin, more to blame than she. What could be more pathetic than the spectacle she presents? An immortal soul in ruin. The star of purity, once glittering on her girlish brow, has set its seal, and forever. A moment ago you heard her reviled, in the lowest terms a man can employ toward a woman, for the depths to which she has sunk, for the company she keeps, for the life she leads. Yet where can she go that her sin does not pursue her? You would drive her out. But where? Gentlemen, the very promises of God are denied her. Who was it said, ‘Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’? She is indeed heavy laden, this trampled flower of the South, but if at this instant she were to kneel down before us all and confess her Redeemer, where is the Church that would receive her, where the community that would take her in? Scorn and mockery would greet her; those she met of her own sex would gather their skirts the more closely to avoid the pollution of her touch. Our sex wrecked her once pure life. Her own sex shrinks from her as from a pestilence. Society has reared its relentless walls against her. Only in the friendly shelter of the grave can her betrayed and broken heart ever find the Redeemer’s promised rest. The gentleman who so eloquently spoke before me told you of her assumed names, of her sins, of her habits. He never, for all his eloquence, told you of her sorrows, her agonies, her hopes, her despairs. But I could tell you. I could tell you of the desperate day—the red-letter day in the banner of the great Oklahoma country—when she tried to win a home for herself where she could live in decency and quiet. … When the remembered voices of father and mother and sisters and brothers fall like music on her erring ears … who shall tell what this heavy heart, sinful though it may seem to you and to me … understanding, pity, help, like music on her erring soul … oh, gentlemen … gentlemen …”
But by this time the gentlemen, between emotion and tobacco juice, were having such difficulty with their Adam’s apples as to make a wholesale strangling seem inevitable. The beautiful flexible voice went on, the hands wove their enchantment, the eyes held you in their spell. The pompous figure of little Pat Leary shrank, dwindled, disappeared before their mind’s eye. The harlot Dixie Lee, in her black, became a woman romantic, piteous, appealing. Sabra Cravat, her pencil flying over her paper, thought grimly:
“It isn’t true. Don’t believe him. He is wrong. He has always been wrong. For fifteen years he has always been wrong. Don’t believe him. I shall have to print this. How lovely his voice is. It’s like a knife in my heart. I mustn’t look at his eyes. His hands—what was that he said?—I must keep my mind on … music on her erring soul … oh, my love … I ought to hate him … I do hate him. …”
Dixie Lee’s head drooped on her ravaged breast. Even her plumed satellites had the wit to languish like crushed lilies and to wipe their eyes with filmy handkerchiefs the while they sniffled audibly.
It was finished. Yancey walked to his seat, sat as before, the great buffalo head lowered, the lids closed over the compelling eyes, the beautiful hands folded, relaxed.
The good men and true of the jury filed solemnly out through the crowd that made way for them. As solemnly they crossed the dusty road and repaired to draw at the roadside, where they squatted on such bits of rock or board as came to hand. Solemnly, briefly, and with utter disregard of its legal aspect, they discussed the case—if their inarticulate monosyllables could be termed discussion. The courtroom throng, scattering for refreshment, had barely time to down its drink before the jury stamped heavily across the road and into the noisome courtroom.
“… find the defendant, Dixie Lee, not guilty.”
XVIII
It was as though Osage and the whole Oklahoma country now stopped and took a deep breath. Well it might. Just ahead of it, all unknown, waited years of such clangor and strife as would make the past years seem uneventful in comparison. Ever since the day of the Run, more than fifteen years ago, it had been racing helter-skelter, devil take the hindmost; shooting into the
