Part 4

He did not hear the news until nearly midday. Worn out, he had fallen asleep across the bed on reaching home and had not waked until after nine. Then he had wound up the clock, got his lonely breakfast, and made a shift of tidying up his room. After that, he went outside. The weather had cleared; it was a bland winter day of the South, with the drenched straw fields and woods sparkling in the sun. He wandered aimlessly around his yard a while, and finally sat down on a bench in front of his cabin, and lit his pipe. He did not notice that the negroes in front of that other cabin across the field were looking curiously his way.

He was very lonely now. The excitement of the night had passed. Usually on Sunday mornings like this he went to Blainey’s store, where others gathered--except when there was preaching--out in front and on the porch. They would be gathering there now, talking about him, and about the row last night. As for him, so long as he lived, he could never go there again.

And so he was brooding when Bill Carson came along the old field road. Bill’s face was grave and he was hurrying. As he turned into the yard Jeff rose, his heart suddenly pounding.

“Jeff, ain’t you heard, man?”

“Heerd what, Bill?”

“Frank Blainey’s store burned down at two o’clock las’ night!”

Off yonder across the field old Jeff was suddenly conscious that the negroes were looking his way; and in Carson’s eyes he saw a close, narrow, searching scrutiny.

“Come on inside,” said Carson.

And inside, half dazed, Jeff heard. Folks--some folks--said he did it. The Blaineys especially. Frank was telling everybody.

“You see, Jeff,” said Carson, gravely, “some niggers up here say they saw you goin’ toward the store at midnight. You didn’t have any lantern lit. Jake saw you comin’ back at daylight. They all spoke to you, but you didn’t speak to them. An’, Jeff, every other man aroun’ here was at that fire but you!”

“Bill!” The old man’s voice was rising, “Bill, tell me as man to man--do you believe I done it?”

Then Carson tried to quiet him, tried to evade the question, too. One thing was certain anyhow--the woman and children didn’t believe it. “I just left home, Jeff,” he said. “My wife an’ the kids had heard about it. They say they know you never done it. They made me come. I left little Ella cryin’. She wouldn’t go to Sunday-school this mornin’.”

But the old man was not to be put off. He was leaning across the table now, eyes dilated. The fear of all wild and half-wild creatures--the fear of the trap--was upon him. “Bill!” he cried. “Does Squire Kirby believe I done it? Tell me the truth, man, for God-A’mighty’s sake!”

“He don’t say, Jeff.”

Over and over, while Carson listened, old Jeff described his movements in the swamp the night before. At last Carson rose to go; there was pity in his eyes now in the presence of the old man’s excitement.

“You just stick aroun’ the house to-day,” he said kindly. “If you go where folks are they’ll start you talkin’.”

And old Jeff stayed at home. At first it was hard, for there was panic in his heart. He wanted to know what was going on beyond those woods that separated him from the more thickly settled part of the community. All morning, anxiously, he watched the road that led from the main thoroughfare to his cabin. Then after dinner, no one having come along the road, and his mind having grown weary of its own anxiety, he bethought him of little Ella Carson, who had cried, and who wouldn’t go to Sunday-school because they said he burned the store. And he went into the cabin, and from underneath the table picked out a piece of white pine boxing.

“I’ll carve her an Injun,” he said. “An Injun gal.”

And with the thought came relief. Hours he worked, sitting outside his cabin on the bench, while the shavings, ever finer drawn, accumulated at his feet and the formless fragment of dry-goods box took shape. Now and then he whetted his keen multibladed knife; now and then, all oblivious, he held the work up for his critical inspection.

Even the nose and chin he carved to a nicety, holding the little figure close, smiling at it now and then, the while his mind, running ahead, saw the completed work. She should have hair from the tip of a black mink’s tail; stain from a pokeberry bush would color her; he would strap a tiny papoose across her back with a bit of crimson cloth.

“The little gal will like that,” he chuckled. “Yes--she’ll like that!”

And as he worked, his face now knotted, now serene, he forgot the store and the fire, he did not observe the lengthening shadows, he did not feel the chill of late afternoon. The sun had dropped low when at last he arose suddenly and, still oblivious, started across the field toward the woods.

His old eyes burned with creative fires. This figure in his hand was the best thing he had ever done. She was his humble masterpiece, this Indian girl who had brought him forgetfulness in his trouble. She was ready to be colored now; but no ordinary pokeberry stain would do for her. Deep in the swamp grew bushes whose berries gave a finer and richer tint than any close about. There was an eager smile on his face as he entered the woods.

He had not seen the commotion among the watching negroes when he rose and hurried across the field; he had not seen them beckoning to someone coming along the road. Now, far in the woods, he did not hear the steps behind him as he pushed through the undergrowth that fringed the swamp.

He found the bush he wanted and began his work. He had stained her to the waist, a rich, dark-red color; he was all intent on his task, when he heard the rustle of leaves behind him, and turned. What he saw made him put the figure quickly in his pocket, as if to hide her from those narrowed eyes. For there, straight at him, head and shoulders above the bushes, came Tom Kelly, rural policeman.

“Tryin’ to git away, was you, ol’ man?” grinned Kelly. “Well, it’s bad policy, an’ you’re old enough to know it.” Then solemnly, with eyes still narrowed, as if within him resided all the dignity and all the sternness of the law: “I’ve got a warrant here for you, swore out this afternoon befo’ Magistrate Kirby by Frank Blainey. Come along now, an’ don’t raise no trouble.”

* * * * *

It might all have been different if the old man had listened to his friends--to Squire Kirby, who next morning bound him over to court, and to Bill Carson, who went on his bond, two thousand dollars it was, for hadn’t he tried to make a get-away, and hadn’t Frank Blainey bitterly opposed turning him loose at all?

The squire and Carson, in a conference after the preliminary trial, advised him to employ to defend him Allen and Cathcart, both of them young, energetic, and highly successful lawyers, and offered between them to advance the money to pay the bill. It wasn’t because he doubted their friendship, or was ungrateful, that he did not heed their advice. But these lawyers were young, their minds were taken up with big affairs. What was an old man to them?

Then Jeff had his prejudices, too. More than once, when he was in the county seat, he had seen on the windows of the town skyscraper the gilded sign of Allen and Cathcart. He had seen their big cars and their handsome homes on Main Street. Now, in his extremity, and in his ignorance also, he distrusted them with the poor man’s distrust of the ostentatiously well-to-do. He did not want Allen and Cathcart.

Even while Kirby and Carson talked, his mind, in relief, had turned to another lawyer, old like himself, and neither rich nor ostentatious--old Colonel Donaldson, whom Sam Blainey used to employ to look up deeds, who had come out one day to fish with him and Sam. This was the lawyer he wanted.

* * * * *

He said nothing about it; he asked no one’s advice; but at four o’clock on the morning after his release on bail he set out on foot to the county seat, and at nine o’clock presented himself at the ancient and shabby offices of Colonel Donaldson on Law Row, just behind the courthouse. Heart pounding fast, he told his story to the dry and pedantic old lawyer, who sat behind a littered table in a dingy room where rows of dusty books, Shakespeares, Miltons, Thackerays, Dickenses, and Scotts climbed upward to the cobwebby ceiling.

Anybody would have told him this was not the man to go to; that it had been years since he appeared in court in anything but civil cases; that he might be the man to run down an old deed, but not to plead a case before a jury; that such fires of youth as he might have possessed--and it was said that he had known them once--had burned out long ago.

And yet old Jeff, looking at that thin old scholar surrounded by his books, trembled lest his case be turned down; while his friends, had they known, would have trembled lest it be accepted. And no one who knew the colonel would have dreamed that he would take such a case. It must have been some queer bond that exists between old men that moved him.

“Very well, sir,” he said, dryly, “I’ll take the case. Yes, I recall Sam Blainey quite distinctly--a fine man. I remember the fishing trip to which you refer.”

He asked a number of questions, rather wearily, leaning back, tips of fingers together. His eyes under his spectacles, that were dusty like his window panes, did light up just a moment when his questions brought out the fact that Jeff had seen a car in the woods. Then he copied down the number in a notebook. He would look into that, he said without conviction.

“God knows!” It broke from old Jeff, it was a cry for sympathy. “God knows I never burned that sto’!”

The voice of the ancient lawyer was dry and unimpressed. “Unfortunately, in a case of this kind it’s court and jury, not the Almighty, which you have to convince.... The Indian, you say, you were staining on that afternoon when you were arrested in the swamp--and by the way, sir, it’s a bad thing to be arrested in a swamp--have you that Indian with you?”

Trembling, the old man reached in the pocket of his ragged overcoat. Because of some fear that in his absence his cabin would be searched, he had brought his treasure with him.

“Here she is, Colonel,” he said eagerly.

The lawyer reached across the table, took the figure, and holding it up looked at it with a smile strangely sweet. Then he arose and went over to a rusty safe in the corner. He put her carefully away in the drawer, closed the iron doors on her and turned the combination.

“I’ll just keep this,” he said. “And now that will be all this morning. I’ll try and arrange for your case to be called as near the opening of court as possible. Keep close at home. And remember--don’t tell anybody anything.”

He turned to a shelf and got down a volume--probably he had already dismissed the case from his mind; and Jeff came out into the alley, above which towered the walls of the courthouse where soon he was to appear before judge and jury, with only that dry old recluse to stand between him and the penitentiary.

The terrible mistake he had made was duly impressed on him that night by Kirby, who drove over to arrange to take him to town to consult Allen and Cathcart in the morning. Jeff had to admit now what he had done, and Kirby was dumfounded.

“You want to go to the pen?” he demanded, pointing his finger at his tenant, his white beard thrust belligerently forward. “You think you’d like it there, old man? Do you know how strong the evidence is against you? Don’t you know, Jeff, I wouldn’t have sent you up if it hadn’t been? Have you any notion how slim yo’ chance is? My God, man--old Donaldson!”

“He’s smart, Mr. Kirby!” cried Jeff. “Ever seen his books? Piled up to the ceilin’, clutterin’ up the winders and fireplaces?”

“An’ what kind of books? Ol’ law books in one room, yes. Novels an’ po’try in the other! It was the novels an’ po’try you saw; an’ it’s the novels an’ po’try he reads. Jeff, listen to me--what made him take the case, God only knows. He’s forgot about it by now. His mind is back on them ol’ Romans an’ centurions. There’s been millions an’ billions of people in the world he knows about--history an’ the like. What difference does one ol’ feller in the pen make to him? He was thinkin’ about ancient Babylon an’ Sodom an’ Gomorrah this mornin’. He don’t even know what he’s done. He’ll forget to come to the trial! Now let’s get down to brass tacks. You let me go to town to-morrow an’ tell him you’ve changed yo’ mind. It’s yo’ life you’re playin’ with, man! If you go to the pen for arson you’ll die there! You’ll never come out again! You’re too old!”

Jeff’s face knotted with pain. But he was true to his simple code. “It--it’s too late, Squire. I’ve give him the case. It wouldn’t be fair--no, it wouldn’t be fair.”

On the third day of the March term of court, at a quarter of nine in the morning, pale and drawn of face, old Jeff climbed the spiral stairs of the courthouse with Squire Kirby, grimly silent, beside him. Only one communication, in all the weeks that had elapsed since Jeff’s visit to him, had Colonel Donaldson sent. That was a crisp notice to appear this morning in court.

Behind them followed Bill Carson and his wife, and little Ella. A strange postscript to the notice had read: “I’m requesting that Ella Carson be present in court.”

“He’s all balled up,” Kirby had sneered when he read it. “He likely thinks it was Ella Carson that was present at the sto’ that night instead of Sam Raine’s wife!”

Down the aisle they passed, the crowd that was already filling the court-room turning to look at them curiously. Kirby shot a quick glance at the lawyers’ tables inside the bar rail.

“He ain’t even here!” he whispered to Jeff. “I hope to God he’s forgot. Then the co’t will give you a _lawyer_!”

The sheriff pointed out the table for the defendant and his lawyer. Kirby sat down beside Jeff; the Carsons found a place on the front bench of the main court-room.

“Silence in the court!” cried the sheriff.

Overawed, and with a queer feeling that he was choking, old Jeff saw the judge enter in his black robes, while the courthouse rose and stood until His Honor was seated. Yonder in an ante-room, laughing and chatting, he made out young Burton Evans, prosecuting attorney, strong, ruddy, confident. And then, last, down the aisle came old Colonel Donaldson, dressed like a preacher or an undertaker, in a long black coat with a narrow white tie. He shook hands flabbily; he walked over to the table below the clerk’s desk and carefully placed on it a small bundle, wrapped in paper.

He came back and sat down at his table, with Jeff between him and Kirby. The court grew quiet. In a haze the old man rose, Donaldson beside him. Crisp, quick, accusing, Burton Evans, glancing fiercely now and then into the old man’s eyes, read off the indictment, long, meaningless, full of legal phrases. The jury was picked, Donaldson after a few careless questions, discarding six of them, then relapsing into his chair. The trial of old Jeff Potter was on.

* * * * *

It was in some respects the strangest case ever tried in that old court-room; for Colonel Donaldson, sitting listless and abstracted beside his client, lived up to the worst predictions of Kirby. He just let everything slide. The judge, an old man himself, looked now and then at this strange lawyer for the defense with something like a frown. Jeff was too dazed to say anything. Only Kirby fought--fought in angry whispers, leaning across Jeff, his eyes blazing into Donaldson’s.

Three witnesses for the State told the same story of the row in the store. The negroes who had passed along the road described having seen him going toward the store about twelve o’clock that night. He had stopped, they said, as if to hide, and hadn’t answered when they called him by name. No, he didn’t have a lantern, or if he had one it wasn’t lit.

“Ask ’em,” whispered Kirby to Donaldson, “how they know it was Jeff Potter in the dark. Ask ’em, sir. Ask ’em!”

“Why, my dear sir,” retorted Donaldson in a whisper hard and dry, “my client here doesn’t even deny it.”

Then Jake testified that at daybreak he saw him coming back from the direction of the store. And Tom Kelly declared that he had trailed the old man into a swamp, and had arrested him there while he was trying to make his get-away.

“Ask him, Colonel Donaldson,” whispered Kirby again, eyes fierce, “how he knows Jeff was trying to get away.”

Old Donaldson didn’t even look at the magistrate now. “Well, just let that pass,” he answered.

“My God!” gasped Kirby.

Likewise, every statement of Frank Blainey went unchallenged. He had ordered the old man out because he was a nuisance, explained Frank. He was just a loafer, who didn’t work for his living. He had hated to do it--sure he had--never hated to do a thing so much in his life. No, he wasn’t angry. He had closed up store and gone home right afterward--about eleven o’clock. His wife had gone to spend the night with her people, and there was no one at home. Yes, he had worried about it a lot on the way home. It had been a disagreeable task, the most disagreeable of his life. Nothing but the good of his business could have made him do it. Jeff Potter wasn’t the kind of man he wanted to have around the store. Women didn’t like to come where he was.

“What women--what women, Colonel Donaldson?” whispered Kirby. “Quick--ask him what women!”

* * * * *

But Colonel Donaldson, sitting back in his chair, the tips of his thin fingers together, his eyes--piercing eyes, too, they were--fastened on the witness, did not seem even to hear; while old Jeff bowed his gray head in shame, and his hands clasped and unclasped on the table before him, and his collar choked him so that he opened it at the neck.

It was at lunch, which followed immediately after Frank’s testimony, that Kirby broke loose. He and Jeff, Bill Carson and his wife and little Ella, had eaten in a restaurant; and now Kirby rose to pay the bill.

“He just don’t care--don’t care that!” And Kirby snapped his strong fingers. “I’ve been in many a trial. I never befo’ saw a lawyer not even raise a finger to save a client!”

A curious crowd had gathered round them. “That’s right,” some of them said. “He ain’t done a thing.” And Mrs. Carson, face upraised, grabbed old Jeff by the sleeve, while little Ella clung to her mother’s skirt.

“Oh, get another lawyer,” pleaded the woman, “before it’s too late. Please--please!”

Jeff swallowed, but he shook his head. “It wouldn’t be fair,” he said. “No--it wouldn’t be fair.”

Early in the afternoon the ancient and supine lawyer for the defense showed the first spark. The testimony for the State was all in, and he had put Kirby on the stand. His voice as he stood, stiff and formal beside Jeff’s chair, was dry, matter of fact.

“How long, Squire Kirby, have you known the defendant, Jeff Potter?”

“Forty years.”

“You must know, then, his reputation for law and order. Is it good or bad?”

“Good.”

Then Burton Evans, exuding confidence, was on his feet. “He’s a tenant on your place, I believe, Mr. Kirby. Did he pay his rent last year?”

Kirby turned to the judge. “Your Honor,” he asked, “must I answer that question?”

The judge looked at Colonel Donaldson. “Do I hear any objections from the plaintiff’s lawyer? If so I may rule that question out. If not--”

The voice was dry. “No objection, Your Honor.” And Kirby, from the witness chair, glared.

“He paid me what I asked,” snapped Kirby.

“And what did you ask, Mr. Kirby?” demanded Evans.

The judge was frowning now--frowning at Donaldson. Back in the court-room a slight buzz of voices began. Two or three spectators left benches in the rear and, bent double, as if to hide their progress, darted to seats nearer the front. And when at last Donaldson spoke, it was as if to further the case of the State.

“As a matter of fact, Mr. Kirby,” he asked, “did he not pay you, for rent, one or more carved Indians, which you sent to your grandchildren as Christmas presents?”

“Yes,” said Kirby.

“Silence in the court!” cried the sheriff.

Burton Evans turned away, a triumphant smile on his face. Then he glanced at the jury. They were mostly men of family; and now he must have remembered suddenly that Donaldson, in choosing the jury, had thrown out unmarried men and men without children; and for the first time now he must have noticed that the jury was mostly old men, some of them plainly grandfathers. Anyway, Burton Evans’s smile suddenly vanished!

“Jeff Potter,” said Donaldson, “will you take the stand?”

* * * * *

Old Jeff never knew how he got there. He only knew he was sitting in a chair on a platform, his tattered hat between his knees; that before him were thousands of faces; that thousands of eyes were turned upon him; that to the left the jury were leaning forward; and that to the right the judge’s swivel chair creaked as His Honor turned toward him. Then he saw that Colonel Donaldson was still standing very erect by his table. Colonel Donaldson was speaking.

“We will not now go into the happenings of that night, Jeff Potter, the night on which it is alleged by the State that you burned the store of this man.” He stopped and looked hard at Blainey. “The State may question you on that if the State so wishes. But I want to get at another matter. Mr. Kelly--I believe that is the officer’s name--has stated that on the afternoon he came to arrest you, you tried to escape by running to the woods. Now, Jefferson Potter, tell the judge and jury why you went to the woods, sir. Talk loud, so they can hear.”

“I went”--old Jeff hardly knew his own voice--“I went to git some pokeberry juice to color an Injun with.”

“And this Indian--for whom were you carving it?”

“Fer little Ella Kyarson.”

“And why were you carving an Indian for little Ella Carson? Talk loud, so the jury there can hear you.”

Jeff turned toward them. They were leaning forward still farther now, these old graybeards, their eyes on him, their faces suddenly all kindly.

“I was carvin’ it fer her because she said she never believed I sot that sto’ on fire.”

The prosecutor, face flushed, sprang to his feet. “I object to all this, Your Honor! I contend, sir, that this is a patent attempt--”

But the judge checked him. “The evidence is admissible, sir,” he said. “The officer testified that the defendant was trying to leave the country. Now it is quite in order for the defense to show that some other motive than escape induced the defendant to enter the swamp where he was arrested.”

The dry voice resumed: “So you were carving an Indian maiden for the little girl who did not believe you burned the store. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir. Her father said she was cryin’ an’ wouldn’t go to Sunday-school.”

“Do you see the little girl in court?”

“Yes, sir. That’s her. Settin’ thar on the front bench with her ma.”

There was a general commotion. People in the rear of the court-room stood up. The jury all looked toward that front bench, while a mother and a little girl in a blue dress both blushed scarlet.

And now a strange thing was happening: Old Colonel Donaldson, his manner still perfectly impersonal, had walked over to the table below the clerk’s desk and opened a bundle.

“I submit this in evidence, Your Honor. Here is the Indian girl he was carving. Does Your Honor care to look at it? You will observe that it is half stained, showing where the work was interrupted by the advent of the officer.”

The judge took it and inspected it, a smile on his strong-lined face. He handed it back, and the colonel walked over to the jury. “Pass it around, gentlemen,” he directed, “from one to the other.”