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Updated: May 14, 2025
The boy orator allowed his uplifted arm to fall until the fingers pointed at the prisoner. "This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata City of to-day.
Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called, turned slowly on his heels, and swept the court room carelessly with a glance of his clever black eyes. The moment was his. "This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata city of to-day.
The citizens were glad it had been so good; it had kept up the general tone of excellence, and it was well that the best lawyer of Dallas should be present on this occasion, and that he should have made what the citizens of Zepata were proud to believe was one of the efforts of his life. As they said, a court-house such as this one was not open for business every day.
To one side sat the jury, ranch-owners and prominent citizens, proud of having to serve on this the first day; and on the other the prisoner in his box. Around them gathered the citizens of Zepata in close rows, crowded together on unpainted benches; back of them more citizens standing and a few awed Mexicans; and around all the whitewashed walls.
The young District Attorney allowed his arm to drop, and turned to the jury, leaning easily with his bent knuckles on the table. "Gentlemen," he said, in his pleasant tones of every-day politeness, "the 'bad man' has become an unknown quantity in Zepata City and in the State of Texas. It lies with you to see that he remains so. He went out of existence with the blanket Indian and the buffalo.
But he was determined that so far as in him lay he would at least send his man back to the penitentiary for the remainder of his life. Young Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called, was very dear to the people of that booming town.
It was also proper that Judge Truax, who was a real Judge, and not one by courtesy only, as was the young District Attorney, should sit upon the bench. He also was associated with the early days and with the marvellous growth of Zepata City.
They were all at the new court-house, and every one possessed of proper civic pride was either in the packed court-room itself, or standing on the high steps outside, or pacing the long, freshly calcimined corridors, where there was shade and less dust. It was an eventful day in the history of Zepata City.
Abe Barrow had been closely associated with the early history of Zepata; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens. His fight with Thompson had been a fair fight as those said who remembered it and Thompson was a man they could well spare; but the case against Barrow had been prepared by the new and youthful district attorney, and the people were satisfied and grateful.
It seemed a particularly happy and appropriate circumstance that the first business in the new court-room should be of itself of an important and momentous nature, something that dealt not only with the present but with the past of Zepata, and that the trial of so celebrated an individual as Abe Barrow should open the court-house with éclat, as Emma Abbott, who had come all the way from San Antonio to do it, had opened the new opera-house the year before.
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