Destry Rides Again Read Online Free PDF

Destry. “Twelve half-bred pups. If peers is equals, I’d rather be tried by twelve bullfrogs in a marsh
     than by them twelve in that jury box! But let ’em set down and think this here over! When my ten years has come up, I’m gunna
     call on all of these here, and if they ain’t in, I’m gunna leave my card, anyway!”
    “Destry,” said the judge drily, “you’d better finish, here.”
    The jury sat back, trying to look scornful, but obviously worried, in spite of themselves.
    “Here’s the last thing,” said Destry. “What you’ve said is plumb true. I been a waster, a lazy loafer, a fighter, a no-good
     citizen, but what I’m gettin’ the whip for now is a lie! I never robbed the Express!”

Chapter Five
    Short speeches linger a long time in some memories; and the final speech of the prisoner remained in the mind of the townsfolk
     long after he was sent away to stripes and bars for ten years. There was one other detail of that day in the courtroom about
     which men and women and children talked, and that was how young Charlie Dangerfield slipped through the crowd and got to Destry
     as he was being led away toward the cell from which he would depart to the prison. There before the crowd she threw her arms
     around his neck.
    “I believe in you, Harry!” she cried. “And I’ll wait for you, too!”
    Wham smiled when it heard this story, for Charlie Dangerfield was only sixteen, but as the years went by and it was noted
     that, though she would laugh and talk with any man, and dance with the first comer on Saturday nights, yet she discouraged
     all tokens of a serious interest; and when she grew up from pretty child to beautiful woman, and still preserved the integrity
     of the fence around her, then Wham scratched its chin and shook its head.
    It respected her the more; the more worthless the man to whom a woman is devoted, the more she is admired and beloved by all
     other men. Their own self-esteem and their right to expect the affection of a wife is thereby, as it were, given a groundwork
     and an assurance.
    More than this: The very girls of Wham, the unmarried ones, the green and hopeful virgins, found it possible to have an actual
     affection for beautifulCharlie Dangerfield, since, no matter how attractive she might be, or how she dimmed their stars in passing, she was no more
     than a passing moon, and never interfered with their affairs. The established youth of Wham quickly learned to waste no hopes
     on Charlie; only the strangers who arrived, attracted by her face and her father’s rapidly increasing fortune, flocked for
     a moment around the flame, singed their wings, and flew lamely away.
    Therefore, when the news came to the town that Destry had been allowed to leave the prison, and that his ten years had been
     shortened to six by good behavior, the first thought of everyone was for Charlie Dangerfield. How would she take this second
     coming of her hero, now aged from the penitentiary?
    Now, on computation, they figured that, if he was twenty-five when he was committed, he could only be thirty-one now. Old
     in shame, then, if not in actual years—a jail-bird, a refugee still from society. He who has been through the fire must bear
     the mark on his face!
    On the evening of that same day, however, on which the news came to the town of Wham, there was a secret meeting to which
     came Jerry Wendell, and Clyde Orrin, and the Ogden brothers, and Cleeves, Sam Warren, Bull Hewitt and Bud Williams.
    Sam Warren, being the most celebrated shot in the town, presided at the meeting, sitting at the head of the table and regulating
     the discussion. They talked frankly, as only those talk who are faced by a common danger.
    The first suggestion was made by Jerry Wendell, who urged that they should hire a gunman for the work of clearing Mr. Destry
     permanently from the slate.
    It was not waved aside, this murderous thought, but seriously taken in hand, and only after some moments of talk was it