[Illustration: 9350]
T was after dark when he finally reached Springtown and rode through the
quiet little street to the only hotel in the village kept by a certain
Tom Wyman, whom Dwight knew. Dismounting, he turned his tired horse
over to a negro porter and went into the room which was used at once
as parlor and office. A dog-eared account-book lay open on a table,
and here, at the request of the cordial Wyman, a short, portly man with
sandy hair and mustache, Carson registered his name.
“You are out electioneering, I know,” the proprietor smiled, agreeably,
as he rubbed his fat hands together. “Well, you are going to run like a
scared dog. I hear your name everywhere. It looked as black as Egyptian
darkness for you once, but you are gaining ground. No man ever had a
better campaign document than the speech Jabe Parsons' wife made. Gee
whiz! it was a stem-winder; it set folks to laughin' at Wiggin, and that
was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Jabe Parsons is for you
now, though he headed one wing of the mob agin your pet darky. You see,
Jabe wants to prove that his wife was right in the way she first felt
about the matter, and he's a strong man.”
As if in a dream, so far into the background had even his contest been
thrust by the tragedy, Carson heard himself as if from the mouth of
another explaining that it was legal business that had brought him
thither, and calmly asking the best road from the village to Purdy's
farm, whither he intended to go the following morning after breakfast.
A few minutes later the supper bell was rung by a negro, who carried it
with deafening clangor through the main hall and round the house, and
two or three drummers, of the small-trade class, a village storekeeper,
and a stock-drover or two clattered in on the uncarpeted floor to the
dining-room, and with more noise drew out their chairs and sat down. It
happened that Carson knew none of them, and so he sat silent through the
meal. Usually of robust appetite, to-night all inclination to physical
nourishment had deserted him. Try as he would to fasten his mind upon
more cheerful things, the view of Dan Willis's body stretched upon the
ground, the ghastly features struggling in the throes of death, came
again and again before his eyes with tenacious persistency. Morbidly, he
asked himself if that state of mind would continue always. The disaster
really had crept upon him through no deliberate fault of his. In fact,
he could trace its very beginning to his determination to turn over
a new leaf and make a better man of himself--to that and to a natural
inborn pity for a persecuted creature, and yet here was he, his hands
stained red, unable by any stoicism or philosophy to rid himself of a
gloom as deep as the void of space. Genuine man that he was, he pitied
the giant who had fallen before him. His mind, trained to logical
reasoning in most matters, told him that he was more than justified in
what he had done; but then, if so, to what was due this strange shock
to his whole being--this restless sense of boundless debt to something
never met before, the ominous flapping of wings in a new darkness around
him?
After supper, to kill time until the hour of retiring, Carson declined
the proffered cigar of his host, and to avoid the--to him--empty chatter
of the others, now assembled on the little porch, he strolled down the
street. Here groups of men sat in front of the stores in the dim
light thrown from murky lamps within, but it happened that he was not
recognized by any of them though there were several gaunt forms he knew,
and he passed on, walking feverishly. On and on he strode till he
had covered more than a mile and suddenly came upon a little church
surrounded by a graveyard. He leaned upon the rotten fence and looked
over at the mounds marked by white marble slabs in some cases, plain,
unlettered natural stones in others, and some unmarked by any sort of
monument, but having little white palings around them.
Carson Dwight shuddered and turned his face back towards the village as
he asked himself if this might be the resting-place of the man he had
slain. Life to him had been so bounteous, despite all the trials he
had encountered, that to think that he had by his own hand, even under
gravest provocation, deprived a human being of its privileges gave him
pain akin to nothing he had ever felt before.
Reaching his room in the hotel, which was at the head of the stairs
in the front part of the house, his first impulse was to lock his
door--why, he could not have explained. It was not fear; what was it?
With a defiant smile he left it unfastened and proceeded to undress
himself. As he threw himself on his bed he became conscious of the
impulse to say his prayers. What a queer thing! It had been years since
he had actually knelt in prayer, and yet tonight he wanted to do so. A
strange, hot, rebellious mood came over him a few minutes later as
he lay staring at the disk on the sky-blue ceiling cast by the
lamp-chimney. He felt like crying out to the infinite powers in tones of
demand to lift the weird, stifling pall that was pressing down on him.
The words his father had spoken in a rage when the old gentleman had
first seen the wound on his forehead after Pete Warren's rescue now came
to him with startling force: “All this for a trifling negro! Have you
lost your senses?”
What, Carson asked himself, would his father say to this deeper
step--this headlong plunge into misfortune as the outcome of the cause
he had espoused?
Carson could not sleep, and fancying that if his light were out he might
do so, he rose and extinguished it and went back to bed. But he was
still restless. The hours dragged by. It was after twelve o'clock, when
on the still night air came the steady beat of a horse's hoofs in the
distance, growing louder and louder, till with a cry of “Woah!” the
animal was reined in at the hotel door, and the stentorian voice of the
rider called out: “Hello! hello in thar!”
There was a pause, but no response. The landlord was evidently a sound
sleeper.
“Hello! hello!” Again the call rang jarringly through the empty hall
below and up the stairway.
Carson sat erect, put his feet on the floor, and stood out in the
centre of the room. He told himself that it was an officer of the law
in pursuit of him. How silly to have imagined that such a thing could
remain hidden! And his mother! Yes, it would kill her! Poor, poor,
gentle, frail woman! He had tried to obviate the blow, resorting to
deception, to actual flight; he had submerged himself in the mire of
criminal secrecy, according to the letter of the law, that he might
shield her, and for what purpose? Yes, the blow would kill her. Dr.
Stone had plainly said so.
He went to the window and looked out. At the gate below he saw a man on
a horse, and heard him muttering impatiently.
“Hello in Thar!” The cry was accompanied by an oath. “Are you-uns plumb
deaf? What do you keep a tavern fur, anyhow?”
There was a sound in the room below of some one getting out of bed, and
then a drowsy voice cried: “Who's there?” It was the landlord.
“Me, Jim Purvines. Let me in, Tom. I've got to have a bed an' a stall
fer my nag. I'm completely fagged out.”
“All right, all right. I'll join you in a minute. Where in the thunder
have you been, Jim?”
“To the inquest. They made me serve. Samson called a jury right off so
they could move the body home. The dead man's mammy didn't want it to
lie thar all night.”
“Good Lord! Jury? Dead man? Why, what's happened, Jim?”
“Oh, come off! You don't mean you hain't heard the news?” The rider had
dismounted and was leading his horse through the gate to the steps on
which the landlord now stood. “Why, Tom, Dan Willis has gone to his last
accountin'. The Webb children, out pickin' huckleberries, come across
his remains on the Treadwell road a mile t'other side o' Wilks's store.
At first it was thought he'd met his death by bein' throwed from his
colt, fer somebody seed it loose with saddle an' bridle on, but when we
examined the body we found a bullet-hole over the heart.”
“Good Lord! Who done it, Jim?”
Carson's heart was in his mouth; his breath was held; there was a pause
which seemed without end.
“Done it hisself, Tom. The jury had no difficulty comin' to that
decision from ample evidence. He'd tuck his pocket-knife an' stuck up an
envelope with his name on it agin a tree, an', half drunk, as we judged
from his flask, he was shootin' at it over the head of a young colt that
hain't been broke a month. Dan must have had the devil in 'im, an' was
determined to train the animal to stand under fire, fer we seed whar the
dirt was pawed up powerful all around. We calculated that the colt got
to buckin' an' to keep from bein' throwed off Dan turned his gun the
wrong way. Anyhow, he's no more.”
“Yes, an' I reckon a body ought to respect the dead, good or bad,”
said the landlord; “but there won't be a river of tears shed, Jim. That
fellow was a living threat to law and order.”
“Yes, I have heard that he was the chap that shot Carson Dwight the
night he saved that nigger from the mob.”
“Sh! He's up-stairs now,” The landlord lowered his voice.
“You don't say! Sort o' out of his beat, ain't he?”
“I don't know--on his way to Purdy's. Go on in; I'll attend to your
horse and come back and find you a place to bunk.”
Carson sank back on his bed. A sense of vast, almost soothing relief was
on him. His mother was saved. The verdict that had been rendered would
forever bury the facts. Now, he told himself, he could sleep with his
mind at rest. And yet--
He heard the new-corner ascend the stairs with heavy, shambling tread
and enter the room adjoining his own. Through a crack between the floor
and the thin partition he saw a pencil of candle-light and heard the
grinding of boot-soles on the floor as the man undressed. Then the light
went out, the bed-slats creaked, and all was still.