Part 16 (2/2)

The man who chooses the career of outlawry is either a natural fool or an innocent madman. The term outlaw has a varied meaning. A man may be an outlaw, and yet a patriot. There is the outlaw with a heart of velvet and a hand of steel; there is the outlaw who never molested the sacred sanct.i.ty of any man's home; there is the outlaw who never dethroned a woman's honor, or a.s.sailed her heritage; and there is the outlaw who has never robbed the honest poor. Have you heard of the outlaw who, in the far-off Western land, where the sun dips to the horizon in infinite beauty, was the adopted son of the Kootenai Indians? It was one of the saddest scenes in all the annals of human tragedy. It was during one of those fierce conflicts which characterized earlier frontier days.

The white outlaw had influenced the red man to send a message of peace to the whites, and for this important mission the little son of the Kootenai chief was selected. The young fawn mounted his horse, but before the pa.s.sport of peace was delivered the brave little courier was shot to pieces by a cavalcade of armed men who slew him before questioning his mission. The little boy was being stripped of the adornments peculiar to Indians when the outlaw rode upon the scene.

”Take your hands off him, or by the G.o.d, I'll cut them off,” he shouted.

”You have killed a lone child-the messenger of peace-peace which I risked my life to secure for the white men who outlawed me.”

Taking the dead body tenderly in his arms, he rode back to face the fury of a wronged people. He understood the penalty but went to offer himself as a ransom, and was shot to death. This, however, is not the cla.s.s of outlaws I would discuss, for very often force of circ.u.mstances makes outlaws of men, but I would speak of the criminal outlaw whom I would spare not nor excuse.

My friends, civilization may be a thin veneer, and the world today may be slimy with hypocrisy, but no man is justified in killing lions to feed dogs.

Outlawry is often a fit companion for treason and anarchy, for which the lowest seats of h.e.l.l should be reserved. The outlaw, like the commercial freebooter, is often a deformity on the face of nature that darkens the light of G.o.d's day.

I need not explain my career as an outlaw, a career that has been gorgeously colored with fiction. To me the word outlaw is a living coal of fire. The past is a tragedy-a tragedy wherein danger lurks in every trail. I may be pardoned for hurrying over a few wild, relentless years that led up to a career of outlawry-a memory that cuts like the sword blades of a squadron of cavalry. The outlaw is like a big black bird, from which every pa.s.serby feels licensed to pluck a handful of feathers.

My young friend, if you are endowed with physical strength, valor, and a steady hand, let me warn you to use them well, for the G.o.d who gave them is the final victor.

Think of a man born of splendid parents, good surroundings, the best of advantages, a fair intellectuality, with the possibility of being president of the United States, and with courage of a field general.

Think of him lying stagnant in a prison cell. This does not apply alone to the highway outlaw, but to those outlaws who are sometimes called by the softer name ”financier.” Not long ago I heard a man speak of a certain banker, and I was reminded that prisons do not contain all the bad men. He said: ”Every dog that dies has some friend to shed a tear, but when that man dies there will be universal rejoicing.”

I am not exactly a lead man, but it may surprise you to know that I have been shot between twenty and thirty times and am now carrying over a dozen bullets which have never been extracted. How proud I should have been had I been scarred battling for the honor and glory of my country. Those wounds I received while wearing the gray, I've ever been proud of, and my regret is that I did not receive the rest of them during the war with Spain, for the freedom of Cuba and the honor and glory of this great and glorious republic. But, alas, they were not, and it is a memory embalmed that nails a man to the cross.

I was in prison when the war with Cuba was inaugurated, a war that will never pa.s.s from memory while hearts beat responsive to the glory of battle in the cause of humanity. How men turned from the path of peace, and seizing the sword, followed the flag! As the blue ranks of American soldiery scaled the heights of heroism, and the smoke rose from the hot altars of the battle G.o.ds and freedom's wrongs avenged, so the memory of Cuba's independence will go down in history, glorious as our own revolution-'76 and '98-twin jewels set in the crown of sister centuries.

Spain and the world have learned that beneath the folds of our nation's flag there lurks a power as irresistible as the wrath of G.o.d.

Sleep on, side by side in the dim vaults of eternity, Manila Bay and Bunker Hill, Lexington and Santiago, Ticonderoga and San Juan, glorious rounds in Columbia's ladder of fame, growing colossal as the ages roll.

Yes, I was in prison than, and let me tell you, dear friends, I do not hesitate to say that G.o.d permits few men to suffer as I did, when I awoke to the full realization that I was wearing the stripes instead of a uniform of my country.

Remember, friends, I do not uphold war for commercial pillage. War is a terrible thing, and leads men sometimes out of the common avenues of life.

Without reference to myself, men of this land, let me tell you emphatically, dispa.s.sionately, and absolutely that war makes savages of men, and dethrones them from reason. It is too often sugarcoated with the word ”patriotism” to make it bearable and men call it ”National honor.”

Come with me to the prison, where for a quarter of a century I have occupied a lonely cell. When the door swings in on you there, the world does not hear your m.u.f.fled wail. There is little to inspire mirth in prison. For a man who has lived close to the heart of nature, in the forest, in the saddle, to imprison him is like caging a wild bird. And yet imprisonment has brought out the excellencies of many men. I have learned many things in the lonely hours there. I have learned that hope is a divinity; I have learned that a surplus of determination conquers every weakness; I have learned that you cannot mate a white dove to a blackbird; I have learned that vengeance is for G.o.d and not for man; I have learned that there are some things better than a picture on a church window; I have learned that the American people, and especially the good people of Minnesota, do not strip a fallen foe; I have learned that whoever says ”there is no G.o.d” is a fool; I have learned that politics is often mere traffic, and statesmans.h.i.+p trickery; I have learned that the honor of the republic is put upon the plains and battled for; I have learned that the English language is too often used to deceive the commonwealth of labor; I have learned that the man who prides himself on getting on the wrong side of every public issue is as pernicious an enemy to the country as the man who openly fires upon the flag; and I have seen mute sufferings of men in prison which no human pen can portray.

And I have seen men die there. During my twenty-five years of imprisonment, I have spent a large portion of the time in the hospital, nursing the sick and soothing the dying. Oh! the sadness, the despair, the volcano of human woe that lurks in such an hour. One, a soldier from the North, I met in battle when I wore the gray. In '63 I had led him to safety beyond the Confederate lines in Missouri, and in '97 he died in my arms in the Minnesota prison, a few moments before a full pardon had arrived from the president.

The details of this remarkable coincidence were pathetic in the extreme, equalled only by the death of my young brother Bob.

And yet, my dear friends, prisons and prison discipline, which sometimes destroy the reason, and perpetuate a stigma upon those who survive them,-these, I say, are the safeguards of the nation.

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