than by reason of the fact that the inducement had increased.
"Billy," he said slowly, almost sadly, "me and Martin don't want to make anything off of you, and we will try to fix it any way you want it. If you want to arrange the thing that way, why it suits us—it suits me and Martin."
"All right," responded the Secretary of State, getting up from the table. "I'll go over to the Governor's house and have Al fix the papers. The sooner I get it, the better chance I'll have to win a stake."
"Billy," called the proprietor of the Emporium, as the official of the Commonwealth was passing out through the door, "just make the note payable to Martin."
The Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan nodded his assent, and departed, leaving the fat gambling kings of the Southwest to prolong the secret session.
When the door was closed, First Class Crawley turned to his companion, his little gray eyes slipping around in their puffy sockets.
"Martin," he said, "aint he a mark?"
The stomach of the rotund Martin undulated like a rubber bag filled with fluid. "Of all damn fools," he gurgled.
"Were it clear?" inquired the proprietor of the Emporium.
"Plain as a speckled pup," responded Martin, "except the note."
"You see," said First Class Crawley, turning around in his chair, "you live in New Mexico, and I wanted the note in your name so that if we had to sue we could get it in the United States court. You can't ever tell what the State courts are going to do with you, but old Uncle Sam's courts don't stand no flim-flam."
"Crawley," announced the owner of the Golden Horn, "Crawley, you are built like a white man, but you have got a head on you like a Yankee."
When the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan returned to the Governor's residence he found that celebrated official and Major Culverson in the library. The irrepressible Major was engaged in presenting a lurid and highly dramatic history of how he had straightened the tangled exigencies of the Commonwealth during the absence of his associates, and how, by virtue of his magnificent personality, the entire Southwest, from the borders of lower Utah to the Rio Grande, was now the placid abode of peace and fraternal good-will. He stopped short as the Secretary of State entered, and bowed. Then thrusting his hand into the front of his coat, he exclaimed, with the affected manner of a tenth-rate actor, "Good morrow, good gambler."
"Top chop," responded the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan. "And a favorite."
"I opine," continued the Major, "I opine, sir, from your gladsome tone that the fat sharks have been successfully harpooned."
"Gentlemen," said the Secretary of State, dropping into a chair by the table, "the reports of this race will announce that Hiram Martin and First Class Crawley 'also ran.'"
"Which being translated," observed the Governor, "means that these gentlemen will advance you the money on the line suggested by your New York lawyer."
"Yes," said the gambler. "You are to fix up the papers, and I am to go down there to-night. Everything turned out just like Randolph Mason said it would. If the rest goes through as slick, we will be riding in carriages."
"Produce the sealed orders," said the Governor, partaking of the mock dramatic atmosphere.
The Secretary of State drew a big envelope from his pocket and threw it down on the table. The Executive leaned over, opened the paper, and, after having examined it carefully, took up a pen and began to write.
Major Culverson wandered over to the window and looked out at the hot, monotonous, sterile country. "I wonder," he murmured, "if this is really the passing of the Honorable Ambercrombie Hergan?"
IX
The audience in the court-room arose and remained standing until the judge in his black silk robe had entered and taken his place on the bench. Then the audience resumed its seat, and the clerk began to read the proceedings for the previous day. The ceremony attendant upon the sitting of the Circuit Court of the United States carried with it an impressive sense of majestic, imperial authority, and an air of grave, judicial deliberation. It was the Government of the United States of America, the spirit of supreme order and law moving through its servant, and, next to the Great Ruler of Events, it was greatest. It had assumed for the good of men the right to sit in judgment, and to say wherein lay the justice of their complicated quarrels. Before it, every man's cause was of equal import, and every man was of equal stature; bond or free, one stood before it naked of influence, and with his shoulder made as high as the shoulder of his fellow.
This is the theory. If it fails, it is because the law at best is but a human device, and its servants, after all, are but men like the others.
The building in which the Federal Court held its session was a substantial, handsome structure, and maintained a strange contrast to the town in which it stood. The town was rough, miserable, uncouth; the temporary habitation of men, struggling ever with the relentless ananke of things; in equal contrast to the officers of this court was the audience in the great court-room. They were the pioneers of civilization; a motley crowd in which the best and worst of human society was mixed and intermixed. They were, for the most part, bronzed, bearded, fearless examples of the inexorable law of the survival of the fittest, but not all. Some were the reckless advance agents of those hardy vices that follow close in the wake of empire,—devils too villainous to be tolerated in the cities of the East, and too bold and too wary to be stamped out by the deliberate machinery of the law.
Against these the officers of the court bore some evidence of polish. They were exact, calculating men, bred to respect order, and obey and maintain the customs of law. The contrast was significant, and one recalled and understood the constant bitter conflict between the judicial tribunals of the State and the judicial tribunals of the Federal Government, bitterly waged and as yet undecided. From one standpoint, this was the calm tribunal of the supreme power of the land, providing the same rights and remedies on the very border of its jurisdiction that it provided at the capital itself, favoring no condition and acting as even-eyed as nature.
On the other hand, one understood how the remote Commonwealth held this court to be the tribunal of a far off imperial government, seeking to enforce laws and customs foreign and repugnant to the laws and customs of its people. To them the Federal judge was a king's governor, travelling with his retinue over a subjugated province, and enforcing his edict by virtue of foreign armies quartered convenient to his hand. And looking on from this point of view, one understood why the outpost State hated this court so bitterly, and whence arose the fierce clamor against it. One understood how the far West smarted under its injunctions, and denounced them as the royal mandates of an emperor's consul, and how the far South collided with this tribunal and cried out against it to the Congress of the United States in a memorial clanging like a bell.
So the conflict was easy to understand, and it was easy to appreciate how large the spectre of discord loomed, and most difficult indeed to force the problem to some happy end.
When the clerk had finished, the marshal called the jury, and struggled bravely, but at times unsuccessfully, with the marvellous tangle of names. Indeed, if the list of this panel had been placed before a student of philology, he would have required no further history of the civilization of the Southwest. When the marshal had ended, the judge directed that the jury should be dismissed until two o'clock, and when order was again restored, the judge turned and looked down gravely from the bench.
"This court," he said, "is ready to pass upon the matter taken under advisement yesterday afternoon. It seems that one Hiram Martin, a citizen of and a resident in the State of New Mexico, brought an action in this court against Ambercrombie Hergan and others to recover the sum of fifty thousand dollars, money, as it is said, borrowed by the said Hergan. The declaration contained the common counts in assumpsit, with which was filed, in lieu of the bill of particulars, a promissory note, made by the said Hergan to the said plaintiff, calling for