Part 9

In this painful indecision he resolved to stop and crave a night's lodging at the crossing of the river. He was the more disposed to this that Dolly, having been ridden hard all day without food, showed unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and it was now snowing. He would give her a night's rest, and then perhaps take the road back to the Hissawachee, or go into the wilderness and hunt.

"Hello the house!" he called. "Hello!"

A long, lank man, in butternut jeans, opened the door, and responded with a "Hello!"

"Can I get to stay here all night?"

"Wal, no, I 'low not, stranger. Kinder full to-night. You mout git a place about a mile furder on whar you could hang up for the night, mos' likely; but I can't keep you, no ways."

"My mare's dreadful tired, and I can sleep anywhere," plead Morton.

"She does look sorter tuckered out, sartain; blamed if she don't! Whar did you git her?"

"Raised her," said Morton.

"Whar abouts?"

"Hissawachee."

"You don't say! How far you rid her to-day?"

"From Jonesville."

"Jam up fifty miles, and over tough roads! Mighty purty critter, that air. Powerful clean legs. She's number one. Is she your'n, did you say?"

"Well, not exactly mine. That is--". Here Morton hesitated.

"Stranger," said the settler, "you can't put up here, no ways. I tuck in one of your sort a month ago, and he rid my sorrel mare off in the middle of the night. I'll bore a hole through him, ef I ever set eyes on him." And the man had disappeared in the house before Morton could reply.

To be in a snow-storm without shelter was unpleasant; to be refused a lodging and to be mistaken for a horse-thief filled the cup of Morton's bitterness. He reluctantly turned his horse's head toward the river. There was no ferry, and the stream was so swollen that he must needs swim Dolly across.

He tightened his girth and stroked Dolly affectionately, with a feeling that she was the only friend he had left. "Well, Dolly," he said, "it's too bad to make you swim, after such a day; but you must. If we drown, we'll drown together."

The weary Dolly put her head against his cheek in a dumb trustfulness.

There was a road cut through the steep bank on the other side, so that travelers might ride down to the water's edge. Knowing that he would have to come out at that place, young Goodwin rode into the water as far up the stream as he could find a suitable place. Then, turning the mare's head upward, he started across. Dolly swam bravely enough until she reached the middle of the stream; then, finding her strength well nigh exhausted after her travel, and under the burden of her master, she refused his guidance, and turned her head directly toward the road, which offered the only place of exit. The rapid current swept horse and rider down the stream; but still Dolly fought bravely, and at last struck land just below the road. Morton grasped the bushes over his head, urged Dolly to greater exertions, and the well-bred creature, rousing all the remains of her magnificent force, succeeded in reaching the road. Then the young man got down and caressed her, and, looking back at the water, wondered why he should have struggled to preserve a life that he was not able to regulate, and that promised him nothing but misery and embarrassment.

The snow was now falling rapidly, and Morton pushed his tired filley on another mile. Again he hallooed. This time he was welcomed by an old woman, who, in answer to his inquiry, said he might put the mare in the stable. She didn't ginerally keep no travelers, but it was too orful a night fer a livin' human bein' to be out in. Her son Jake would be in thireckly, and she 'lowed he wouldn't turn nobody out in sech a night. 'Twuz good ten miles to the next house.

Morton hastened to stable Dolly, and to feed her, and to take his place by the fire.

Presently the son came in.

"Howdy, stranger?" said the youth, eyeing Morton suspiciously. "Is that air your mar in the stable?"

"Ye-es," said Morton, hesitatingly, uncertain whether he could call Dolly his or not, seeing she had been transferred to Burchard.

"Whar did you come from?"

"From Hissawachee."

"Whar you makin' fer?"

"I don't exactly know."

"See here, mister! Akordin' to my tell, that air's a mighty peart sort of a hoss fer a feller to ride what don' know, to save his gizzard, whar he mout be a travelin'. We don't keep no sich people as them what rides purty hosses and can't giv no straight account of theirselves. Akordin' to my tell, you'll hev to hitch up yer mar and putt. It mout gin us trouble to keep you."

"You ain't going to send me out such a night as this, when I've rode fifty mile a'ready?" said Morton.

"What in thunder'd you ride fifty mile to-day fer? Yer health, I reckon. Now, stranger, I've jist got one word to say to you, and that is this ere: _Putt_! PUTT THIRECKLY! Clar out of these 'ere diggin's! That's all. Jist putt!"

The young man pronounced the vowel in "put" very flat, as it is sounded in the first syllable of "putty," and seemed disposed to add a great many words to this emphatic imperative when he saw how much Morton was disinclined to leave the warm hearth. "Putt out, I say! I ain't afeard of none of yer gang. I hain't got nary 'nother word."

"Well," said Morton, "I have only got one word--_I won't_! You haven't got any right to turn a stranger out on such a night."

"Well, then, I'll let the reggilators know abouten you."

"Let them know, then," said Morton; and he drew nearer the fire.

The strapping young fellow straightened himself up and looked at Morton in wonder, more and more convinced that nobody but an outlaw would venture on a move so bold, and less and less inclined to attempt to use force as his conviction of Morton's desperate character increased. Goodwin, for his part, was not a little amused; the old mischievous love of fun reasserted itself in him as he saw the decline of the young man's courage.

"If you think I am one of Micajah Harp's band, why don't you be careful how you treat me? The band might give you trouble. Let's have something to eat. I haven't had anything since last night; I am starving."

"Marm," said the young man, "git him sompin'. He's tuck the house and we can't help ourselves."

Morton had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and in his amusement at the success of his ruse and in the comfortable enjoyment of food after his long fast his good spirits returned.

When he awoke the next morning in his rude bed in the loft, he became aware that there were a number of men in the room below, and he could gather that they were talking about him. He dressed quickly and came down-stairs. The first thing he noticed was that the settler who had refused him lodging the night before was the centre of the group, the next that they had taken possession of his rifle. This settler had roused the "reggilators," and they had crossed the creek in a flat-boat some miles below and come up the stream determined to capture this young horse-thief. It is a singular tribute to the value of the horse that among barbarous or half-civilized peoples horse-stealing is accounted an offense more atrocious than homicide. In such a community to steal a man's horse is the grandest of larcenies--it is to rob him of the stepping-stone to civilization.

For such philosophical reflections as this last, however, Morton had no time. He was in the hands of an indignant crowd, some of whom had lost horses and other property from the depredations of the famous band of Micajah Harp, and all of whom were bent on exacting the forfeit from this indifferently dressed young man who rode a horse altogether too good for him.

Morton was conducted three miles down the river to a log tavern, that being a public and appropriate place for the rendering of the decisions of Judge Lynch, and affording, moreover, the convenient refreshments of whiskey and tobacco to those who might become exhausted in their arduous labors on behalf of public justice. There was no formal trial. The evidence was given in in a disjointed and spontaneous fashion; the jury was composed of the whole crowd, and what the Quakers call the "sense of the meeting" was gathered from the general outcry. Educated in Indian wars and having been left at first without any courts or forms of justice, the settlers had come to believe their own expeditious modes of dealing with the enemies of peace and order much superior to the prolix method of the lawyers and judges.

And as for Morton, nothing could be much clearer than that he was one of the gang. The settler who had refused him a lodging first spoke:

"You see, I seed in three winks," he began, "that that feller didn't own the hoss. He looked kinder sheepish. Well, I poked a few questions at him and I reckon I am the beatin'est man to ax questions in this neck of timber. I axed him whar he come from, and he let it out that he'd rid more'n fifty miles. And I kinder blazed away at praisin' his hoss tell I got him off his guard, and then, unbeknownst to him, I treed him suddently. I jest axed him ef the hoss was his'n and he hemmed and hawed and says, says he: 'Well, not exactly mine.' Then I tole him to putt out."

"Did he tell you the mar wuzn't adzackly his'n?" put in the youth whose unwilling hospitality Morton had enjoyed.

"Yes."

"Well, then, he lied one time or nuther, that's sartain shore. He tole me she wuz. And when I axed him whar he was agoin', he tole me he didn' know. I suspicioned him then, and I tole him to clar out; and he wouldn'. Well, I wuz agoin' to git down my gun and blow his brains out; but marm got skeered and didn' want me to, and I 'lowed it was better to let him stay, and I 'low'd you fellers mout maybe come over and cotch him, or liker'n not some feller'd come along and inquire arter that air mar. Then he ups and says ef the ole woman don' give him sompin' to eat she'd ketch it from Micajah Harp's band. He said as how he was a member of that gang. An' he said he hadn't had nothin' to eat sence the night before, havin' rid fer twenty-four hours."

"I didn't say----" began Morton.

"Shet up your mouth tell I'm done. Haint you got no manners? I tole him as how I didn't keer three continental derns* fer his whole band weth Micajah Harp throw'd onto the top, but the ole woman wuz kinder sorter afeared to find she'd cotch a rale hoss-thief and she gin him a little sompin' to eat. And he did gobble it, I tell _you_!"

* A saying having its origin, no doubt, in the worthlessness of the paper money issued by the Continental Congress.

Young rawbones had repeated this statement a dozen times already since leaving home with the prisoner. But he liked to tell it. Morton made the best defense he could, and asked them to send to Hissawachee and inquire, but the crowd thought that this was only a ruse to gain time, and that if they delayed his execution long, Micajah Harp and his whole band would be upon them.

The mob-court was unanimously in favor of hanging. The cry of "Come on, boys, let's string him up," was raised several times, and "rushes" at him were attempted, but these rushes never went further than the incipient stage, for the very good reason that while many were anxious to have him hung, none were quite ready to adjust the rope. The law threatened them on one side, and a dread of the vengeance of Micajah Harp's cut-throats appalled them on the other. The predicament in which the crowd found themselves was a very embarrassing one, but these administrators of impromptu justice consoled themselves by whispering that it was best to wait till night.

And the rawboned young man, who had given such eager testimony that he "warn't afeard of the whole gang with ole Micajah throw'd onto the top," concluded about noon that he had better go home--the ole woman mout git skeered, you know. She wuz powerful skeery and mout git fits liker'n not, you know.

The weary hours of suspense drew on. However ready Morton may have been to commit suicide in a moment of rash despair, life looked very attractive to him now that its duration was measured by the descending sun. And what a quickener of conscience is the prospect of immediate death! In these hours the voice of Kike, reproving him for his reckless living, rang in his memory ceaselessly. He saw what a distorted failure he had made of life; he longed for a chance to try it over again. But unless help should come from some unexpected quarter, he saw that his probation was ended.

It is barely possible that the crowd might have become so demoralized by waiting as to have let Morton go, or at least to have handed him over to the authorities, had there not come along at that moment Mr. Mellen, the stern and ungrammatical Methodist preacher of whom Morton had made so much sport in Wilkins's Settlement. Having to preach at fifty-eight appointments in four weeks, he was somewhat itinerant, and was now hastening to a preaching place near by. One of the crowd, seeing Mr. Mellen, suggested that Morton had orter be allowed to see a preacher, and git "fixed up," afore he died. Some of the others disagreed. They warn't nothin' in the nex' world too bad fer a hoss-thief, by jeeminy hoe-cakes. They warn't a stringin' men up to send 'em to heaven, but to t' other place.

Mellen was called in, however, and at once recognized Morton as the ungodly young man who had insulted him and disturbed the worship of God. He exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the owner of the horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready to forgive even the dying thief upon the cross. In vain Morton protested his innocence. Mellen told him that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd to hand him over to the sheriff. But Mellen's additional testimony to Morton's bad character had destroyed his last chance of being given up to the courts. As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take definite shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in full sight of the condemned man. Mr. Mellen used with telling effect, at every one of the fifty-eight places upon his next round, the story of the sad end of this hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and ended as an impenitent thief.

Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun descending toward the horizon. He heard the rude voices of the mob about him. But he thought of Patty and his mother.

While the mob was thus waiting for night, and Morton waiting for death, there passed upon the road an elderly man. He was just going out of sight, when Morton roused himself enough to observe him. When he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the notion that it must be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian preacher, whose sermons he had so often heard at the Scotch Settlement. Could it be that thoughts of home and mother had suggested Donaldson? At least, the faintest hope was worth clutching at in a time of despair.

"Call him back!" cried Morton. "Won't somebody call that old man back? He knows me."

Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit. The leaders looked knowingly the one at the other, and shrugged their shoulders.

"If you don't call him back you will be a set of murderers!" cried the despairing Goodwin.

_CHAPTER XVII._

DELIVERANCE.

Parson Donaldson was journeying down to Cincinnati--at that time a thriving village of about two thousand people--to attend Presbytery and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of some of his brethren in the matters of doctrine and revivals. In previous years Mr. Donaldson had been beaten a little in his endeavors to have carried through the extremest measures against his more progressive "new-side" brethren. He considered the doctrines of these zealous Presbyterians as very little better than the crazy ranting of the ungrammatical circuit riders. At the moment of passing the tavern where Morton sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in "laying out" a speech with which he intended to rout false doctrines and annihilate forever incipient fanaticism. His square head had fallen forward, and he only observed that there was a crowd of godless and noisy men about the tavern. He could not spare time to note anything farther, for the fate of Zion seemed to hang upon the weight and cogency of the speech which he meant to deliver at Cincinnati. He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding that no one would go after him, set up a vigorous calling of his name, Mr. Donaldson did not hear it, or at least did not think for an instant that anybody in that crowd could be calling his own name. How should he hear Morton's cry? For just at that moment he had reached the portion of his argument in which he triumphantly proved that his new-side friends, however unconscious they might be of the fact, were of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of fatal error.

Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of the crowd.

"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him. 'Pears like as ef he's a-lyin' any how. I don't 'low as he knows the ole coon, or the ole coon knows him--liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't won't do no harm to call him back." Saying which, he mounted his gaunt horse and rode away after Mr. Donaldson.

"Hello, stranger! I say, there! Mister! O, mister! Hello, you ole man on horseback!"

This was the polite manner of address with which the messenger interrupted the theological meditations of the worthy Mr. Donaldson at the moment of his most triumphant anticipations of victory over his opponents.

"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning round on the messenger a little tartly; much as one would who is suddenly awakened and not at all pleased to be awakened.

"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a hoss-thief, and we had three-quarters of a notion of stringin' on him up; but he says as how as he knows you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll do it, for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's sartain shore."

"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the parson, not yet fairly awake to the situation. "Indeed? I'm in a great hurry. What does he want? Wants me to pray with him, I suppose. Well, it is never too late. God's election is of grace, and often he seems to select the greatest sinners that he may thereby magnify his grace and get to himself a great name. I'll go and see him."

And with that, Donaldson rode back to the tavern, endeavoring to turn his thoughts out of the polemical groove in which they had been running all day, that he might think of some fitting words to say to a malefactor. But when he stood before the young man he started with surprise.

"What! Morton Goodwin! Have you taken to stealing horses? I should have thought that the unhappy career of your brother, so soon cut short in God's righteousness, would have been a warning to you. My dear young man, how could you bring such disgrace and shame on the gray hairs----"

Before Mr. Donaldson had gotten to this point, a murmur of excitement went through the crowd. They believed that the prisoner's own witness had turned against him and that they had a second quasi sanction from the clergy for the deed of violence they were meditating. Perceiving this, Morton interrupted the minister with some impatience, crying out:

"But, Mr. Donaldson, hold on; you have judged me too quick. These folks are going to hang me without any evidence at all, except that I was riding a good horse. Now, I want you to tell them whose filley yon is."

Mr. Donaldson looked at the mare and declared to the crowd that he had seen this young man riding that colt for more than a year past, and that if they were proceeding against him on a charge of stealing that mare, they were acting most unwarrantably.

"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had, and whar he was a-goin'?" said the man from the other side of the river.

"I don't know. How did you come here, Morton?"

"Well, I'll tell you a straight story. I was gambling on Sunday night----"

"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in the minister.

"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I had--horse and gun and all--I seemed clean crazy. I lost a hundred dollars more'n I had, and I give the man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and gun. Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased and keep 'em for six months and I was ashamed to go home; so I rode off, like a fool, hoping to find some place where I could make the money to redeem my colt with. That's how I didn't give straight answers about whose horse it was, and where I was going."

"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll have to let the young man go. You ought to be thankful that God in his good providence has saved you from the guilt of those who shed innocent blood. He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and often attends church with his mother. I am sorry he has got into bad habits."

"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said one of the party; and as the rest offered no objection, he cut the cords that bound Morton's arms and let him go. The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed her, hoping that some accident would leave her in his hands; the man from the other side of the creek had taken possession of the rifle as "his sheer, considerin' the trouble he'd tuck." The horse and gun were now reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to disperse, each one having suddenly remembered some duty that demanded immediate attention. In a little while Morton sat on his horse listening to some very earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of gambling and Sabbath-breaking. But Mr. Donaldson, having heard of the Methodistic excitement in the Hissawachee settlement, slipped easily to that, and urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night and withered in a day. In fact the old man delivered to Morton most of the speech he had prepared for the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements. Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise that he would go directly home, and, with a few seasonable words on God's mercy in rescuing him from a miserable death, he parted from the young man. Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well with his speech. After all, was it not better, perhaps, that this young man should be drawn into the whirlpool of a Methodist excitement than that he should become a gambler? After thinking over it a while, however, the logical intellect of the preacher luckily enabled him to escape this dangerous quicksand, in reaching the sound conclusion that a religious excitement could only result in spiritual pride and Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these would be lost as certainly as a gambler or a thief.