IN THE CAGE.
Sometimes an eternity of suffering is condensed into a single minute,
yet that suffering is so like a dream, because of the paralyzed brain,
that one cannot fully realize it until afterwards. As Nate Tierney stood
over his victim, nerveless and faint, with eyeballs starting from their
sockets, he realized the lowest deep of hell, yet as if it had been
another man whose agony he looked upon. It was quite beyond his own
enduring. Lucy's horrified shriek brought him more fully to his senses,
and the screams of the children who scattered in every direction, crying
as they ran on, only to creep back after a moment drawn by that prurient
curiosity which is the one natural tie left between the buzzard and man.
It afterward seemed to Nate as if in that one horrible, helpless minute
a hundred shapes had suddenly encompassed him, risen out of the earth
perhaps, so rapidly did they crowd about him, hemming him in. Amid the
wild confusion some one thought to summon the marshal, another Mr.
Dalton, still another the doctor, and these three strode upon the scene
in time to see poor Nate lifting his old friend's head, to whisper
hoarsely,
"Oh, Bill! I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it!" in a wail that would
have melted granite.
He looked up as Dr. Browne thrust everybody aside, and begged pitifully:
"Oh, can't you mend it, doctor? It's broke in, but can't you mend it? I
didn't go to do it. I just swung the stick. Can't you mend it?"
The doctor knew at the first glance that there was no mending for that
mortal hurt. But it was hard to say so in answer to that wild white face
quivering at his feet.
"Get back, Nate," he said kindly, stooping to the body. "I'll see what
can be done. Let somebody that's stronger than her help to carry him,"
and at his gesture, two or three onlookers stepped forward obeying ward.
As they lifted the lifeless form, Nate, still stupidly kneeling beside
it as if unable to move, the slow-dripping blood from that crushed
temple fell on his upturned face, and trickled down into the stubble of
his unshorn beard. Lucy, amid her frantic cries, saw it and fell back
half fainting, into the arms of Babette, who hastily led her away inside
her own rooms, assisted by Rachel, who came quickly to her aid. The
baby, nearly dropping from her sister's nerveless arms, was caught by
Dan before it reached the ground, and the little thing clung to him,
wailing feebly in its fright and misery. So, not knowing what else to
do, he followed the girls indoors, a part of the women pressing after.
But most of the crowd trailed in the wake of the little procession which
was being led by the doctor into the Hapgood cottage, only to be
promptly shut out at the door.
Dalton went inside with the doctor, but the marshal put a hand on Nate's
shoulder, and said under his breath,
"Come, Tierney."
Nate looked at him dully.
"Yes, indeed, I'll do anything for him, anything you say. Won't they let
me sit by him, don't you think?"
The man of law looked into the other's face amazedly. Didn't he
understand yet? he wondered.
"You can't do anything now," he said. "Just come along wi' me. Don't you
know what you've done, man alive?"
Nate looked at him an instant and staggered where he stood.
"Go on," he said thickly, after that one instant's horrified perception.
"I'm ready," and he spoke no more.
The marshal hustled him quickly through the crowd and down the street,
to the little building known as the lock-up. It was the place to which
he had meant to consign Hapgood a bit ago. The crowd buzzing after like
flies around a dead horse, surged up to the door and leaned against it,
outside. It was a small square building, scarcely larger than a
smoke-house, with two tiny barred windows up under its roof, and one
thick door, clamped with iron, in front. It was built of stone laid in
cement up to within three feet of the eaves, and finished out with
timber. There was no way of heating it, and it held absolutely no
movable furniture. A bunk projected two feet from one of the cemented
walls, eighteen inches above the stone floor, bare planks, without
mattress or blanket. That was all. A cage, indeed, as Nate had called it
in his anger of a short time since, which had so completely vanished
now. But he little cared for its bareness in that misery of the soul
which so far transcends bodily suffering.
"I'll bring you in a blanket and a comfortable of my wife's to make up
your bed, and a basin and pitcher of water. I don't want to be hard on
an old chum. I'll fix you up real snug while you stay, and you just try
and settle down to make the best of it. You can't gather up spilled
milk, Nate, nor spilled blood, neither. Now I'm going, but I'll come
back pretty soon, and don't worry."
Nate still did not answer, nor move. But as the door closed heavily his
lips parted.
"Dead! Dead! No, _no_, NO!" and a strong shudder took possession
of him, as uncontrollable as an ague fit.
When the marshal returned, a few moments later, with the comforts he had
promised, Nate still sat there, gray, haggard, and speechless. The
kind-hearted jailer looked askance at him, and hesitated to ask him to
rise that he might arrange the bunk. When he did proffer the request
Nate stared at him a moment, as if unhearing, then slowly rose and
looked down at the planks he had been sitting on, seemingly seeing them
for the first time. Then he continued the survey, letting his eyes,
already bloodshot with excitement and misery, scan the narrow place.
"So," he said finally, in a low, hoarse whisper, smiling up into the
officer's face with an expression that almost started the tears even to
those hardened orbs, "So, you're going to bury us both--Bill and me. Him
in a grave and me in a tomb--Bill and me. I never thought 'twould be
like that--Bill and me. Buried together--Bill and me." He continued to
mutter the words over and over, and when the keeper left the building he
shook his head sadly.
"Poor Nate! It's touchin' him in the brain, I reckon. Hope he won't lose
his reasons afore the trial comes on, though. He'll need 'em then if he
ever does. Blarst his foolishness! What did he mix in for, anyhow?"