Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1891 — A Study In Black. [ARTICLE]

A Study In Black.

“Pop-?’* A little boy stood beside a gambling table, long ago, in an Idaho mining town, and addressed this trembling word to one of the players. The father was a rough man with great sinewy hands, a grizzled face and thin, merciless lips. But his eyes—how vicious - and utterly lost the light that flashed' from their reddish balls! “Say, pop, when you goin’ home?” Again the timid voice came to the rough man, and he laid down his cards deliberately and turned around. The boy knew the light that blazed from those eyes only too well, and he drew back and huddled himself together ih a piteous but mute appeal for mercy. “Wliat’s that to you, you young whelp? Git out o’ here, now, an’ don’t ye waste a minit or I’ll be the death o’ you. Are you goin’?” Slowly, sadly the little fellow turned and walked to the saloon door. Then he paused to look back and found those vicious red eyes still fixed upon him, and the voice came to his ears: “What you stoppin’ fur? Git!” And gulping down a sob that was rising in his throat, the boy passed through the door. For another hour the players silently played their cards, and the rough man said, as he took the pack in his hands:

“How many cards, Pete? But tfefore Pete could reply there came the quivering words: “Pop, hain’t you mos’ done?” The rough man cried out an oath and turned. He did not say a word, but he drew back his great sinewy fist to strike the shivering child. “Hold up, Ike, Baker!” cried Pete, leaning across the table and catching the raised arm, “don’t you hit ’im.” There was devilishness in the red eyes, and had he struck, it would have been a blow to kill. For a moment not a sound was heard, and then came the nose of a scuffle from an adjoining table. “Ole Copper is havin’ it out with Big Jerry,” volunteered a bystander. A moment later a pistol shot was heard —one shot was all—a shot that laid the little boy with trembling voice low on the saloon floor. A higher power had made of Big Jerry an instrument in consummating a merciful deed. “Good God, Ike,” cried Pete, “Big Jerry has killed yer boy!” Not the quiver of a muscle—not a shadow of expression crossed the rough man’s stolid face. He cast one glance of his vicious red eyes toward the little lifeless heap on the floor, then, drawing a revolver, he turned it upon Big Jerry and shot him dead where he was standing. “Blood for blood,” he muttered, catching up the pack once more with his sinewy hands. “How many cards did you say, Pete?”—Free Press.