Part 17

“Tad never war sech a idjit; could run a mill, an’ plough, an’ pull fodder, an’ feed stock! I’ll be bound thar’s a mighty differ round old man Griff’s diggins now, sure. He ’peared a idjit mos’ly when he war beat over the head. Mos’ folks would look miser’ble then. He air lackin’, I know, but I reckon he kin work fur hisself ez well ez he done fur old man Griff. It’s a plumb shame ter jail Mink Lorey fur fower month more till he kin git another fool jury ter try him, an’ mebbe send him ter the Pen’tiary fur five year. I dunno what oughter be done ter sech a jury ez you-uns.”

It was probably well for the public peace that events of general interest had taken place during the seclusion of the jury which the by-standers found a certain gloomy satisfaction in detailing; their attention was thus readily enough diverted from the disagreements of the jury-room to the circumstances of Peter Rood’s funeral,—who preached the sermon, and who were in attendance. They all sat, solemnly chewing, tilted back in their splint-bottomed chairs on the front gallery of the little hotel. The lights which came from the doors and windows of the building, slanting out in wide shafts, seemed to sever the gloom in equal sections. The figures of the men were dimly seen in the dusky intervals. The stars, in infinite hosts, were marshaled in the black sky, for the moon was late to-night. Only about the horizon were melancholy desert spaces. The summit line of the distant mountains was indistinguishable in the gloom. The landscape was all benighted. The presence of invisible trees close at hand was perceptible only to some fine sense of the differing degrees of density in the blackness. A horse trotted through the slant of light, falling into the road and showing the sleek roan of the steed and the impassive face under the drooping hatbrim of the rider,—then loomed an indeterminate centaur in the alternate glooms. The sounds of the town were shrill, then faint, with lapses of silence. One forlorn cricket was piping somewhere between the bricks of the pavement.

“’Pears ter me,” said Bylor, “toler’ble cur’ous ez they wagoned deceased”—he had adopted the word from the reports of the sermon—“way up yander ter Eskaqua Cove, ter be buried in the graveyard thar.”

“Waal,” explained a by-stander, “his mother ’lowed he’d feel mo’ lonesome down hyar ’n he would ’mongst the mountings,—an’ I reckon he would.”

“Ennybody ez air dead always looked lonesome ter me,” suggested Ben Doaks.

“I don’t b’lieve thar’s a man in the Newnited States, alive or dead, ez lonesome ez me!” cried the cattle-owner. “I wisht that thar durned moon would heft over the mountings. Ez soon ez she shows her aidge I’m a-goin’ ter light out arter my cattle an’ Bob.”

“’Pears ter me,” said Doaks, reflectively, “ez things hev turned out mighty cur’ous, ez he war buried in the same graveyard whar Lethe Sayles seen Tad’s harnt.”

“I wouldn’t go by thar of a dark night fur nuthin’,” declared Bylor. “Mought see both of ’em.”

“I reckon,” said Ben Doaks, “ez Peter Rood knows all ’bout’n it now,—whether it war Tad’s harnt or no.”

Something at a distance sounded sharply and fell into silence.

“I reckon folks ez air dead hev got suthin’ mo’ ter tend ter’n studyin’ ’bout folks they knowed in this life,” said Bylor, nodding his head with grim conviction.

“Yes, sir-ee!” exclaimed the ex-foreman, as he chewed vigorously, and spat at the post which upheld the floor of the gallery above; he was an effective marksman. “They hev got a verdict in the courts of the t’other world on Peter Rood by now. They ain’t got no failin’ human jury thar,” he continued sanctimoniously. “I reckon he’s burnin’ in Torment before now.” He offered this suggestion with that singular satisfaction in the symmetry of the theory of fiery retribution characteristic of the rural religionist.

Ben Doaks stirred uneasily. “I dunno ’bout that,” he said, dubiously. “Rood war a perfessin’ member.” He himself laid great stress upon this unattained grace.

“I know that,” said the ex-foreman, “but ’tain’t done him no good. I hearn him ’low at camp ez he war a backslider, an’ ef the truth war knowed I reckon he war a black-hearted sinner.”

Once more that strange sound, half smothered by the distance, smote upon the air. Then the regular hoof-beat of a horseman riding by on the red clay road interposed and rattled against the stones, and echoed from the bridge below with hollow reverberations.

“What war that cur’ous noise?” demanded Ben Doaks.

“Sounded ter me like cattle a-bellerin’,” said old man Beames.

The attentive pause was illustrated by the red spark of each man’s pipe, dulling as it was held motionless for a moment in the hand; then restored to the smoker’s lips, it glowed into subdued brilliancy, sometimes giving an elusive glimpse of the delicate and shadowy blue vapor curling from the bowl. They heard nothing but a vague murmur, dropping presently into silence.

“I b’lieve,” said Bylor, “ez Peter Rood hed suthin’ on his mind.”

“Me, too,” spoke up another man. “He sot next ter me, an’ he looked troubled an’ tried, somehows, an’ wunst in a while he sighed mightily. I dunno what ailed him.”

“I reckon he war sick,” suggested a by-stander.

“He didn’t ’pear ter be sick. He turned an’ looked at me plumb pleased ter death when that Lethe Sayles ’lowed Tad war alive. An’ then when the ’torney-gineral made it out ez ’twar jes’ Tad’s harnt he jumped for’ards, an’ pinted with his finger, an’ next thing I knowed the man war a harnt hisself.”

The sound in the distance had become continuous, louder. Once more it broke upon the conversation. “Boys,” said Jerry Price, in a tone of conviction, “suthin’ is a-goin’ on somewhar.”

The vocation for the _rôle_ of spectator is strong in humanity. Each of the long, lank mountaineers started up with unusual willingness, under the impression that he was balked of some entertainment at which nature intended that he should be dead-headed. The distant murmur was once more lost in the sounds nearer at hand. A sudden resonant, brazen clangor challenged the dark stillness. It had a vibratory, swaying iteration, for it was the court-house bell, rung as an alarum to the law-abiding population. As the group started swiftly in the direction of the sound, a man came running at great speed down the pavement, almost overturning old Beames, and called loudly to the proprietor of the hotel, asking if Judge Gwinnan were within. They recognized the deputy sheriff as he rushed into the bar-room.

“The old man’s been hevin’ hell with Mink Lorey, down yander at the jail,” he explained in breathless gasps. “He kerried on like a crazy idjit when we tuk him back,—fout like a wild-cat every foot o’ the way. An’ now thar’s a crowd at the jail a-batterin’ the doors, an’ breakin’ the winders, an’ swearin’ they’ll take Mink Lorey out.”

In pursuit of the promise of excitement their feet did not lag. They heard, as they set out, the deputy’s rasping voice behind them renewing his anxious demand for Judge Gwinnan; then it was lost in the ceaseless thud of their own feet, and the insistence of the bell filling the darkness with its deliberate alternations of tone, till the night rocked and swayed with the oscillating, remonstrant sound. Approaching the court-house, they could hear those fainter and continuous vibrations of the bell-metal, the turbulent but bated undertones, that set the air a-trembling and seemed some muttered affirmation, some reserve of clamors, that should presently break out, too, and utter wrath and measured menace. The darkness seemed unparalleled, since there was something to be done and at hazard. Only at long intervals in the blackness, windows of dwellings were opened, and here and there a venturesome female head was thrust out in baffled and hopeless curiosity. But most of the houses had closed blinds and barred doors, for the alarum of the court-house bell had told the inmates all that the prudent might care to learn. The streets of Shaftesville, grass-grown as they were, had known the tread of lynchers, and distrusted any lawless mission. It was so dark that men, meeting at intersections of the streets, ran blindly against each other, recoiling with oaths,—sometimes against trees and posts. A few provident souls carrying lanterns, and looking in the blackness like fleet fire-flies, were made aware when they encountered the rescuers, in pressing in among the crowd in the jail-yard,—the posse and the mob otherwise indistinguishable,—by having the lanterns struck out of their hands. The jail was silent; its very vicinity had a suggestion of glum resistance. Some consciousness of a darker and solid mass in the air was the only cognizance that the senses could take of its propinquity, except, indeed, the sound of breaking glass. A rail had been dragged from a fence, and, in the hands of unseen parties, after the manner of a battering-ram, the glass in the lower panes was shattered. This was wanton destruction, for the bars withstood the assault. The working of some instrument at them, ever and anon, was an evasive bit of craft, for follow the sound as they might, the sheriff and his posse could never locate it. A light showing in an upper window was saluted by a volley of stones, and quickly disappeared. The missiles fell back in the dense, panting, nameless, viewless crowd, eliciting here and there a howl, succeeded by jeering laughter.

Once, as the glass crashed in a lower window, a child’s voice within whimpered suddenly; a soothing murmur, and the child was silent.

“Mis’ Perkins,” called out a voice from among the mob to the jailer’s wife, “make Jacob open the do’! Tell him we’ll string him up ef he don’t, when we git holt o’ him.”

There was intense silence in the closely jammed, indistinguishable crowd without, for who could say who was the posse or who the mob, helpless against each other?

A murmur of remonstrance within. An interval. A sharp insistence from the crowd, and a quavering response.

“I _can’t_, gentlemen!” cried a shrill feminine voice. “Jake’s sech a bull-headed fool, he _won’t_!”

The summit line of the distant mountains was becoming vaguely visible; the stars were not less bright, the black earth was as dark as ever, but the moon-rise was imminent.

There was suddenly a surging commotion in the crowd; it swayed hither and thither, and rushed violently upon the door. The point of attack being plain enough, there was some feeble resistance, offered presumably by the posse. A pistol was fired in the air—another—a wild turmoil; all at once the door crashed and gave way; half the assailants were carried over its splintered ruins by the force of their own momentum. There were lights enough now springing up in every direction. Men with torches dashed through the halls, holding them aloft with streaming clouds of flame and smoke, as erratic as comets. It required only a moment, with the united exertions of half a dozen stalwart young fellows, to break the door of Mink’s cell; it offered no such opposition as the main entrance.

There was no cry of joy as they rushed in; no fraternal embrace for the liberators who had risked so much in the cause of natural justice.

The cell was empty. The bars at the window were firm as ever. The locked door was broken but a moment ago. And he was gone!

The word rang through the building. The infuriated crowd pervaded the cell in a moment, like some tumultuous flood. The jailer himself was not to be found. His wife and children had sought refuge elsewhere.

The doors were guarded against the sheriff, while a select party searched every room in the house. Some serious fright was occasioned to certain malefactors, who had reason to fear the people more than the law, and esteemed the jail in some sort as a haven, but there were many who appealed for liberation. One of these, a victim of the federal court, Big Brandy Owen by name, made so earnest an insistence that his case was considered. But he was no genuine moonshiner, it was argued; he was only a saloon-keeper who had fallen a victim to the liquor laws. “We dunno ye,” they prevaricated. “Ye ain’t labeled Brandy, ye see.” And so they locked his door upon him.

They did as much damage as they could, in default of accomplishing their object, and on retiring they dispersed without recognition among the peaceful citizens who had weakly striven, half-heartedly, to uphold the law.

The moon was up. The Great Smoky Mountains, in magnificent immensity, clasped the world in the gigantic curve about the horizon east and south. The trees seemed veiled in some fine, elusive silver gauze, so gleaming a line of light came to the eye from their boughs. Frost sparkled upon the grass-fringed streets. The shadows were sharp and black. The stars—few now—faintly scintillated in empyreal distances. The town was so still, not even a dog barked. The rescuers experienced a luxury of bravado in the realization that it was for fear of them that it was fain to hold its breath and lie in darkness, save for the light of the moon. Perhaps it was as well, and spared further mischief, that they exulted in riding their horses at a gallop through the streets, breaking now and then into wild fantasies of yells, with a fantastic refrain of echoes.

The rioters after a time disappeared. A long interval, and perhaps a single equestrian figure would ride down the straggling street and whoop aloud, and turn in his saddle to listen for a comrade’s response, and then ride on.

Finally silence fell. The waning moon was high. The night was well-nigh spent. Sundry movements of shadows on window blinds, sundry dim yellow lights showing through them, despite the lustre of the moon, indicated that the inhabitants considered that the drama had been played, and were betaking themselves to bed. Alethea Sayles, crouching in the dormer window of the cottage where the witness fee had sufficed to lodge her, looking with dilated eyes over the little town enmeshed in the silver net of its frosted trees, strained her ears in the silence, and exclaimed in the anguish of suspense, “They mus’ hev tuk him out, Aunt Dely, or they wouldn’t hev been so gamesome.”

She knew little of town ways. Had the mob been successful, the frost itself could not vanish more silently.

Mrs. Purvine, her wise head pillowed, for the first time in her life, as she remarked, on “town folkses’ geese,” sleepily assented.

The moon looked down in Alethea’s upturned eyes. The pine that stood by the window tapped upon the pane. She felt as if it were a friendly and familiar thing, here where there were so few trees; for the sight of houses—crowded, indeed, they seemed—overwhelmed her in some sort, and embarrassed her. It was all a-shimmer with the frost; even an empty bird’s-nest on a bough was a miracle of delicate interweaving of silver gleams. Her hair in its rich dishevelment fell in coils and tangles half-way to her waist. She clasped her hands over one knee. It was an interval of peace.

“Lethe!” said Mrs. Purvine, rousing herself. “Ain’t that gal kem ter bed yit!” The admonition was a subterfuge. She was about to impart information. “Lethe, ef ye b’lieve me, these hyar crazy muskrats o’ town folks hev got _sun-bonnets ready-made_ in these hyar stores.”

The vicissitudes of the trial had been the veriest trifles to her. She had utilized the metropolitan sojourn. She had pervaded the stores, as women of her sort do elsewhere. Mighty little there was in these stores that Aunt Dely had not rummaged.

“Ye tole me that afore,” said the absorbed Alethea.

Mrs. Purvine chuckled aloud as she reviewed the fact. It afforded her an occult complacence, yet she laughed at it.

Presently she recurred to it.

“My cracky! Lethe,” she exclaimed, “_who_ makes ’em?”

And with this problem in her mind, she fell asleep among the comforts of “town folkses’ geese.”

XV.

The fires of discontent smouldered throughout the next day. Although many of the country people had left town, there was more than the usual stir upon the streets. Idle knots of men strolling about or standing on the corners neglected their avocations in eager discussion of the events of the previous evening. There was very general reprehension of the action of the mob,—so general that it might suggest a wonder as to whence came its component elements, and an unpleasant feeling that perhaps a satirical ringleader might be advancing these rebukes, and watching with secret laughter their effect. Many rumors prevailed, some so fantastic as to balk the credulity that sought to accept them, and others probable enough to be a solution of Mink’s disappearance. Some maintained that he had been liberated by the mob. Others said that at the time of the onslaught he had been hidden in the cellar with the jailer and the jailer’s family; and this was again roundly denied, for the cellars were reported to have been thoroughly searched. It was said, too, that the prisoner had been gagged, bound securely, and boldly carried forth from the back door through the crowd in the intense darkness, and that he was now held in retreat at the sheriff’s house. However it might have been, that officer received about noonday two or three threatening letters signed, “The men that elected you.”

He had since been disposed to exonerate himself, and he bore a troubled, anxious face about the town, and talked in a loud, strained, remonstrant falsetto. It was through some words which he let fall, in the perturbation of the discovery that he was liable to be held to account personally by this unknown and numerous enemy, that it became public he had applied to Judge Gwinnan, not in his judicial capacity, but for advice in this emergency, and that it was Gwinnan who had devised the ruse which had baffled the rescuers.

The curiosity as to Mink’s fate grew so pronounced as the day wore on that a party of young roughs went openly to the jail and interrogated the jailer. For that functionary had returned. He showed himself at the window of his stronghold jauntily enough. He had a jovial expression, a black mustache that turned cheerfully upward,—for he laughed often and usually laughed last,—quick brown eyes, and a bushy, unkempt head; he was unshaven and in his shirt-sleeves. He seemed to care not an atom for the illogical views of his fellow-citizens.

“I’m appinted by the sher’ff o’ Cherokee County ter keep folks in jail, an’ by Hokey, I’m a-goin’ ter do it.”

They begged him to let them in; they had come to see him sociably,—a-visitin’, they protested.

“Can’t git in hyar, ’thout ye steal a horse or kill yer gran’mother, one.” He shook his keys jocosely at them, and vanished.

At noon, when the train was due at the little station, the mystery was solved. The jailer was strolling up and down the platform, grave enough for once in his life, and with apparently no purpose. Asked if he were going to Glaston he replied, with an effort at his usual manner, “Not in these clothes, if the court knows itself, an’ it rather think it do!”

It was a day of doubtful moods, of sibilant gusts of wind and intervals of brooding stillness. There was a pervasive suggestion of moisture in the air, but as yet no rain. The odor of decaying leaves came from the woods on the other side of the road. The sunshine was uncertain. White clouds were silently astir in the upper regions of the atmosphere; among the distant blue ranges the intervenient valleys could be distinctly located by the mist rising from them, elusively showing, then veiling the farther heights, and anon falling like some airy cataract over a mountain side, seeming to cleave it in twain, and simulating a gap, a pass, in the impenetrabilities of the massive clifty range. The little stream that flowed along on the other side of the rails reflected the vacillating sentiments of the sky: now a cloud driving faster than its current showed upon its lustrous olive-green surface among the reflections of the crimson sumach bushes that lined its banks; and now it glittered in a burst of sunshine and emulated the azure of the changing heavens. The little town lay at a considerable distance; whether it hoped to grow up to the depot, or desired the advantages of civilization without its close contact, one might speculate in vain. Its clustering roofs were quite distinct among the thinning red and yellow and brown leaves of the trees.

A number of loungers waited to watch the train pass; for it was only a short time since the road had been completed, and the engine was still a mechanical miracle in the estimation of many of the country people, who came sometimes great distances to see it. Harshaw was going down to attend the court at Glaston. He was much smarter than usual, although he wore on his yellow head a soft wide hat, which gave him a certain highwayman-like aspect. A gay necktie of blue shot silk showed beneath his yellow beard; his stiffly starched cuffs, already much crumpled, protruded beneath his coat-sleeves.

“What are you about, my friend? Going to jump the country?” he demanded of the deputy-sheriff, who was embarrassed, and replied evasively that he was waiting to see a man. Harshaw turned to greet Gwinnan, who was also going off, having adjourned the court a few moments too late the preceding evening and thereby failing to catch the night train. Harshaw accosted him with a full expression of his large, bluff, familiar manner. It was received with a certain coolness, which may have been Gwinnan’s normal social temperature, but Harshaw was keenly alert to descry significance, and was disposed to refer it to the hasty threat at the court-house door. Gwinnan’s impassive inexpressiveness gave him no intimation whether or not it had been repeated, and as the judge stood looking about the little unpainted wooden depot, all its business easily to be comprised in the two rooms, Harshaw began to detail to him how much the road had cost, how it was hoped it would aid in developing the resources of the country, how it had already begun to conduct itself like a sure enough grown-up railroad, and had got into law. Suddenly the two shining parallel rails trembled with a metallic vibration. A distant roar growing ever nearer and louder impinged upon the air. A cloud of smoke appeared above the trees, and with a glitter of burnished metal, a turmoil of sound, a swift gliding rush, the overpowering imperious presence of the engine gladdened the sight of the simple country folks.

Gwinnan was silent as Harshaw talked, until suddenly that worthy broke off, “Hello! what’s going on here?”

Some distance up the red clay road from the direction of the town, a buggy was driven at a furious rate, with the evident intention of forestalling the departure of the train.

All the loungers saw it. The conductor saw it, and yet he cried out, “All aboard!” and sprang upon the platform as the train began to move. The by-standers understood the ruse the next moment. There were two men in the buggy: one was handcuffed; the other was the sheriff. The deputy and two guards dragged the prisoner across the platform and upon the slowly moving train, which forthwith rattled away around the curve at the greatest speed of which it was capable, leaving the suspected rescuers gazing blankly at it, and realizing that because of the insecurity of the county jail Mink was to be lodged in the metropolitan prison of Glaston.

It is said that nothing so expands the mental horizon as the experience of emotion. In this sense Mink was becoming a wise man. He knew despair not as a word, a theory, a sentiment, but in its baffled, futile finality. He had conned all the fine vacillations of suspense. He had exhausted the delusions of hope.