Western Law

As a Christian and a chronicler, my duty is to write the truth. Those who have met me know me to be a short man, stocky, as "gaunt as a redwood" as my grandmother joked, with a hooked nose and a bushy beard. I have no education past my tenth year at grammar school, but because I can read and write, the city of Gridley, Kansas, asked me to establish a newspaper here thirty years ago this May, and I have done my best to fulfill the city's ardent hopes. My circulation is meager, my advertising space is forever clipped, my skill with pen and ink is poor, but those who can read assure me they are thankful for the Gridley Beagle. I tell you these shortcomings to reinforce that my eye is fair, and that I copy the news as plainly and with the unbiased verisimilitude befitting a modern newspaper writer.

However, there is one series of articles for which I must first apologize to my loyal readers, and second, fill in the omitted details. Rest assured, I reported only the truth when I wrote of these events over the summer of '89, but I did not, I must confess, give you the whole truth. I hope this pamphlet serves as both a sincere apology and reparation for your limited understanding of these events over these many years. I am dying soon, and I feel an urgency to make honest the record.

I speak, of course, about the Keller boy's murder and the subsequent trial of Oslo Felts. While I assure you every word that appeared under my name in theBeagle was absolutely true, the part I never disclosed had to do with my role in said events. This pamphlet will serve as a supplement. Forgive me if I describe details I've reported before, but since it has been some time, I feel compelled not to simply refresh your memory with the who, what, where, why, and when, but to give you my point of view as these events transpired. Forgive me, secondly, for my lack of flair. I may have a romantic's heart but only a stenographer's talent. I wish I were a gifted storyteller, but I am a fact writer by vocation, and I accept the yoke.

This is the truth.

I was at my press, typesetting the morrow's headline, when I witnessed out my rear window Sheriff Faber and four of his deputies leading a thin, tall man toward the jail. This was first of June. I had never seen the stranger before in Gridley, and as yet, did not know his name. I recollect Sheriff Faber also saw me through the window, after which, he shook his head, knowing correctly, I would soon knock on his door. I snatched up a piece of charcoal I'd been using as a writing implement since Barrett's failed to stock adequate supplies of ink, ripped off a snatch of printing paper, and hustled directly to the jail.

"Now, Jacob, don't go upsettin' nobody till we get to the bottom of the woodpile here," Sheriff Faber said to me by way of greeting.

"Just tell me who this man is, Sheriff..."

Sheriff Faber looked at me with the expression of a poor poker player, his thoughts as easy to read as a school primer. Does he tell me now and get it over with, or allow me to pester him over the course of the day? The former wins out because he gives me the facts as he knows them to this point.

The Keller boy was found in the brush out by Chester Noble's ranch with a hatchet in his chest, his small hands clinging to the handle as though he wanted to pull the vile tool from his body but lacked the strength. Oddly, he was found on his knees, with his hands joined on the handle, the fingers interlocking as though he were in prayer, except the wood he was prostrate before was not the cross of our Lord but a hickory axe handle. He was nine-years-old.

His body was discovered by Mr. Noble as the latter rode back from digging postholes along his fence line and it was only luck the coyotes hadn't found the boy first. Mr. Noble ordered two ranch-hands to keep watch while he galloped directly to Sheriff Faber's house, which, it turns, was a wise reaction to have. The sheriff hurried to the scene of the absurdly inhuman act, and after inspecting the body, laid the boy upon the earth and removed the murderous implement from his chest. As you know, the axe handle had the initials O.F. carved into the belly, and the base of the letter "F" was extended with a jagged line bisecting it to form the sign of the cross. When I first saw it, I must confess the second letter looked like the hilt of a sword, but that was only my first, passing reaction.