헤밍웨이의 단편 배경의 실제 소송 케이스 기록은 첨부 파일 참조- 첨부 파일에 대한 (if any )저작권은 해당자에게 있음.
산사태nevadaSawayer.pdfMark
Twain, The Facts in the Great Land-Slide Case, Alta California, April
11, 1870]
THE FACTS IN THE GREAT LAND-SLIDE CASE.
It was in the early days of Nevada Territory. The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe Valleys — very high and steep, and so when the snow gets to melting off fast in the spring, and the warm surface earth begins to moisten and soften, the disastrous landslides commence. You do not know what a land-slide is, unless you have lived in that country and seen the whole side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in the valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain's front, to keep the circumstance fresh in your memory all the years that you may go on living within seventy miles of that place.
General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial officers, to be United States Attorney. He considered himself a lawyer of parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it — partly for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was Territorially meagre (which is a strong ｅxpression.) Now the older citizens of a new territory look upon the rest of the world with a calm, unmalignant contempt as long as it keeps out of the way — when it gets in the way they snub it. Sometimes this latter takes place of a practical joke.
One morning Dick Sides rode furiously up to Gen. Buncombe's door in Carson City, and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his horse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted him to defend a suit for him, and would pay him $500 if he achieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world of profanity, he poured out his griefs. He said it was pretty well known that for some years he had been farming (or ranching, as the more customary term is,) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of it, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the edge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above it on the mountain side. And now the trouble was that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides had come and slid Morgan ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and everything down on top of his ranch, and exactly covered up every single vestige of his property to a depth of about six feet. Morgan was in possession, and refused to vacate the premises — said he was occupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else's — and said cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it always stood on, and would like to see anybody make him vacate.
"And when I reminded him," said Sides, weeping, "that it was on top of my ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask me why didn't I stay on my ranch and hold possession when I see him coming! Why didn't I stay on it, the blathering lunatic — and by George, when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like the whole world was a ripping and a tearing down that mountain side — trees going end over end in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping about a thousand feet high and bursting into ten million pieces, cattle literally turned inside out and a coming head on with their tails hanging out between their teeth — oh, splinters and cordwood, and thunder and lightning, and hail and snow, odds and ends of hay stacks and things, and dust — oh, dust ain't no name for it — it was just clouds, solid clouds of dust ! — and in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on his gate post a wondering why I didn't stay and hold possession; likely ! umph ! I just took one glimpse of that speckticle, General, and I lit out'n the country in three jumps exactly.
"But what grinds me it that that Morgan hangs on there and won't move off'n that ranch — says its his'n and he's going to keep it — likes it better'n he did when it was higher up the hill. Mad ! Well, I've been so mad for two days I couldn't find my way to town — been wandering round in the brush in a starving condition. Got anything here to drink, General? But I'm here now, and I'm a going to law. You hear me!"
Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man's feelings so outraged as were the General's. He said he had never heard of such high-handed conduct in all his life as this Morgan's. And he said there was no use in going to law — Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he was — nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would take his case, and no judge listen to it. Sides said that right there was where he was mistaken — everybody in town sustained Morgan. Hal Brayton, a very smart lawyer, had taken his case, The courts being in vacation, it was to be tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Roop had already been appointed to that office, and would open his court in the largest parlor of the Ormsby House, at two that afternoon.
The innocent General was amazed. He said he had suspected before that the people of that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy, rest easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certain as if the conflict were already over. Sides wiped away his tears and left.
At two in the afternoon referee Roop's Court opened, and that remorseless old joker appeared, throned among his sheriffs, his witnesses, and a packed jury, and wearing upon his face a fraudulent solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his fellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended, after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness prevailed, for at the slightest noise the Judge uttered sternly the command: .
"Order in the Court!"
And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed his way through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books, and on his ears fell an order from the Judge which was the first respectful recognition of his high official dignity that had ever saluted them, and it saturated his whole system with pleasure:
"Way for the United States Attorney!"
The witnesses were called — legislators, high government officers, ranch men, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three-fourths of them were called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably went in favor of the plaintiff Sides. Each new witness added new testimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man's property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morgan lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones — they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the General, with a great show of triumph on his face, got up and made a mighty effort: he pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared and howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm, statistics, history, pathos and blasphemy, and wound up with a grand war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal Justice! [Applause]
When the General sat down, he did it with the comfortable conviction that if there was anything in good strong testimony, a big speech and believing and admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan's cake was done. Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking profoundly, and the still audience waited breathlessly for his decision. Then he got up and stood erect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floor with long, deliberate strides, and his chin in his hand, and still the audience waited. At last he returned to his throne and seated himself. The sheriff commanded the attention of the Court. Judge Roop cleared his throat and said:
"Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day. This is no ordinary case. on the contrary it is plain that it is the most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide. Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it is in favor of the plaintiff Sides. I have listened, also to the remarks of counsel, with high interest — and especially will I commend the masterly and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents the plaintiff. But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow human testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity to influence as to our undoing at a moment so solemn as this? Gentlemen, it ill becomes us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven. It is plain to me that Heaven in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move this defendant's ranch for a purpose. We are but creatures and we must submit. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, unsatisfied with the position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to remove it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, it ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act. No — Heaven created the ranches, and it is Heaven's prerogative to rearrange them, to experiment with them, to shift them around at its pleasure. It is for us to submit, without repining. I warn you that the thing which has happened is a thing with which the sacreligious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle. Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff Richard Sides, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God! And from this decision there is no appeal.
Buncombe sailed his cargo of law books and plunged out of the Courtroom a raving madman, almost. He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous ass; a fool; an inspired idiot. In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated with Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out some sort of modification of the verdict. Roop yielded at last and got up to walk. He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up happily and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranch underneath the now Morgan ranch still belonged to Sides; that his title to the ground was just as good as it ever had been, and, therefore, he was of opinion that Sides had a light to dig it out from under there and —
The General never waited to hear the end of it. He was always an impatient and irascible man that way. At the end of two weeks he got it through his understanding that he had been played upon with a joke.
MARK TWAIN.