CHAPTER VIII

OF COUNSEL FOR IT

Meanwhile Roscommon had waited.  Then, in Garcia’s name, and backed by him, he laid his case before the Land Commissioner, filing the application (with forged indorsements) to Governor Micheltorena, and alleging that the original grant was destroyed by fire.  And why?

It seemed there was a limit to Miss Carmen’s imitative talent.  Admirable as it was, it did not reach to the reproduction of that official seal, which would have been a necessary appendage to the Governor’s grant.  But there were letters written on stamped paper by Governor Micheltorena to himself, Garcia, and to Miguel, and to Manuel’s father, all of which were duly signed by the sign manual and rubric of Mrs.-Governor-Micheltorena-Carmen-de-Haro.  And then there was “parol” evidence, and plenty of it; witnesses who remembered everything about it,—­namely, Manuel, Miguel, and the all-recollecting De Haro; here were details, poetical and suggestive; and Dame-Quicklyish, as when his late Excellency, sitting not “by a sea-coal fire,” but with aguardiente and cigarros, had sworn to him, the ex-ecclesiastic Miguel, that he should grant, and had granted, Garcia’s request.  There were clouds of witnesses, conversations, letters, and records, glib and pat to the occasion.  In brief, there was nothing wanted but the seal of his Excellency.  The only copy of that was in the possession of a rival school of renaissant art and the restoration of antiques, then doing business before the Land Commission.

And yet the claim was rejected!  Having lately recommended two separate claimants to a patent for the same land, the Land Commission became cautious and conservative.

Roscommon was at first astounded, then indignant, and then warlike,—­he was for an “appale to onst!”

With the reader’s previous knowledge of Roscommon’s disposition this may seem somewhat inconsistent; but there are certain natures to whom litigation has all the excitement of gambling, and it should be borne in mind that this was his first lawsuit.  So that his lawyer, Mr. Saponaceous Wood, found him in that belligerent mood to which counsel are obliged to hypocritically bring all the sophistries of their profession.

“Of course you have your right to an appeal, but calm yourself, my dear sir, and consider.  The case was presented strongly, the evidence overwhelming on our side, but we happened to be fighting previous decisions of the Land Commission that had brought them into trouble; so that if Micheltorena had himself appeared in Court and testified to his giving you the grant, it would have made no difference,—­no Spanish grant had a show then, nor will it have for the next six months.  You see, my dear sir, the Government sent out one of its big Washington lawyers to look into this business, and he reported frauds, sir, frauds, in a majority of the Spanish claims.  And why, sir? why?  He was bought, sir, bought—­body and soul—­by the Ring!”