He turned and faced the crowd and the District Attorney defiantly.

“I’m not crying for the men I killed.  They’re dead.  I can’t bring them back.  But she’s not dead, and I treated her worse than I treated them. She never harmed me, nor got in my way, nor angered me.  And now, when I want to do what I can for her in the little time that’s left, he tells you I’m a ‘relic of the past,’ that civilization’s too good for me, that you must bury me until it’s time to bury me for good.  Just when I’ve got something I must live for, something I’ve got to do.  Don’t you believe me?  Don’t you understand?”

He turned again toward the Judge, and beat the rail before him impotently with his wasted hand.  “Don’t send me back for life!” he cried.  “Give me a few years to work for her—­two years, one year—­to show her what I feel here, what I never felt for her before.  Look at her, gentlemen.  Look how worn she is and poorly, and look at her hands, and you men must feel how I feel.  I don’t ask you for myself.  I don’t want to go free on my own account.  I am asking it for that woman—­yes, and for myself, too.  I am playing to ‘get back,’ gentlemen.  I’ve lost what I had, and I want to get back; and,” he cried, querulously, “the game keeps going against me.  It’s only a few years’ freedom I want.  Send me back for thirty years, but not for life.  My God!  Judge, don’t bury me alive, as that man asked you to.  I’m not civilized, maybe; ways have changed.  You are not the man I knew; you are all strangers to me.  But I could learn.  I wouldn’t bother you in the old way.  I only want to live with her.  I won’t harm the rest of you.  Give me this last chance.  Let me prove that what I’m saying is true.”

The man stopped and stood, opening and shutting his hands upon the rail, and searching with desperate eagerness from face to face, as one who has staked all he has watches the wheel spinning his fortune away.  The gentlemen of the jury sat quite motionless, looking straight ahead at the blinding sun, which came through the high, uncurtained windows opposite.  Outside, the wind banged the shutters against the wall, and whistled up the street and round the tin corners of the building, but inside the room was very silent.  The Mexicans at the door, who could not understand, looked curiously at the faces of the men around them, and made sure that they had missed something of much importance.  For a moment no one moved, until there was a sudden stir around the District Attorney’s table, and the men stepped aside and let the woman pass them and throw herself against the prisoner’s box.  The prisoner bent his tall gaunt figure over the rail, and as the woman pressed his one hand against her face, touched her shoulders with the other awkwardly.

“There, now,” he whispered, soothingly, “don’t you take on so.  Now you know how I feel, it’s all right; don’t take on.”