A group of shabby men lounging in front of Fult Cawsler's restaurant
paid scant attention to a wild-eyed youth who came down the street at a
run and dashed into the door. Newt found the dining-room on the main
floor empty save for a weary and untidy woman who was clearing away the
china of the mid-day trade, and Fult Cawsler himself, whose bulky figure
was just then disappearing up the stairs. The boy stood for a moment
anxiously gazing about the place with its oil-cloth table-covers and its
gaudy wall calendars, then dashed pell-mell after the climbing
restaurateur. The woman called to him in high-pitched and raucous
prohibition, but Newt Spooner went heedlessly on his way. At the head of
the stairs in the murky hallway Cawsler turned, and without at once
recognizing the on-rushing invader wheeled belligerently to face him.
The plans which had been hatched in his place that day were not such as
would enhance his reputation as a law-abiding tradesman should they come
to general knowledge. As the proprietor blocked the way, his voice
carried the ring of asperity.
"What in hell air ye makin' such a furss about?"
"Hit's me, hit's Newt Spooner," volleyed the unarmed avenger. "Whar's
Red? Whar's the Deacon? I hain't got no time ter fool round. I'm in
hell's own haste!"
"They've done gone--all of 'em," responded Cawsler calmly, as he
recognized the ex-convict. "I don't know whar they're at." He paused,
and then admonished coldly, "Ye'd better set down and calm yoreself. Ef
ye runs around town so distracted-like, they'll put ye in the jail-house
fer shore."
Newt only snarled. Here was a situation upon which he had not counted.
He had unexpectedly found his quarry, and he was unarmed. By the time he
remedied his deficiency his victim might have escaped. For an instant he
stood in a futile and silent transport of rage, his entire body in a
tremor of blood-lust and excitement. Then with an oath he pushed Cawsler
aside and entered the room where he had left his clansmen. It, too, was
empty, except for a figure breathing with drunken and stertorous stupor
in a chair at one corner.
The one man was old Jason Dode. Newt rushed across, and unceremoniously
catching him by the shoulders, twisted his sagging figure until it lay
chest upward. The old drunkard mumbled and raised balky hands against
the indignity, but consciousness flitted only spasmodically across his
face, and he sank back again with an incoherent murmur. Newt tore open
his coat and vest, and ran his hand under the left armpit, but he found
there only an empty holster. Old Jason was drunk and ineffective, and
lest in his maudlin condition he might wander out and disturb the
equilibrium of their plans, the clan had disarmed him. Newt rose and
faced Cawsler.
"I've got ter have a gun," he exploded. "Git me a gun!"
But Cawsler, gazing into the wild face and burning eyes, judged that
Newt, too, had been "hittin' up the red licker," and that a gun was just
what he least needed. Accordingly he shrugged the fat shoulders under
his dirty shirt, and shook his head in negation.
"I hain't got no gun," he lied; "I done loaned mine out." With another
wild oath, the would-be assassin dashed down the steps and out into the
street. He would search the town until he found a kinsman, and
incidentally he would try to keep an eye of sufficient watchfulness on
Henry Falkins to remain familiar with his movements. It did not occur to
him that Henry Falkins might be unsuspicious. To his mind Henry Falkins
must know, if he had heard of the pardon, that, straight as a homing
pigeon, Newt would come to him for reprisal. Such was the code of the
Cumberlands. So his task was threefold: to arm himself; to find Henry
Falkins; and to conceal himself from Henry Falkins.
The Spooner aggregation meant to make its appearance at the
psychological moment, and until that moment to remain as invisible as a
covey of quail in close brush. Newt, no longer excited of guise, but
quiet, almost feline in his alert movements, slunk from saloon to
saloon, and scanned the length of the streets with a purposeful glitter
in his eye--and his search for a kinsman was vain.
The afternoon was well advanced when the boy, lurking in a side street,
saw a buggy pass at a rapid trot, and recognized its occupants. The
vehicle was going out Main Street, and in it were a girl and a man. For
the second time that day, he had sighted his quarry, and, turning into
Main Street, he began to follow. It was merely reconnaissance, but, if
he could hold the vehicle in sight long enough, he might know where
later to take up his watch. A man on foot is poorly equipped to follow a
standard-bred trotter between the shafts of a light buggy, but the
streets of Winchester lie over gradual and rolling hills, and the girl
who held the reins was a humane driver. A square ahead, she drew her
horse to a walk for the climb, so the man could keep them in sight as
far as the next ridge, and he strode along at a rapid distance-devouring
walk, forgetting his weariness as a hunter forgets it when a covey rises
whirring from the stubble.
Then for a while he lost them, and so, losing and regaining his view, he
followed them up and down hill till the town dwindled into outskirts and
the street became a smooth turnpike between farms and woodlands. But, at
last, the difference in speed told, and the boy reluctantly abandoned
the chase. Not, however, until he had glimpsed through stretches of
velvet woodland a thing which he did not understand, and which he paused
in perplexity to study. Back in the patriarchal grove of oaks and
walnuts and hickories was a frame platform, and men were working on
their hands and knees, polishing its floors. About it were strung long
lines of paper lanterns of bright and varied colors and fantastic
shapes. Still farther back, but close of access to the platform, rose
the front of an ancient and vine-covered mansion with its little village
of barns and servants' quarters, peeping out between lilac bushes and
cedars. But it was the platform that puzzled the mountain traveler, and
he perched himself on the fence to "study" about it.
A negro boy, riding a colt and carrying an empty basket, came jogging
down the avenue and into the pike, where he drew rein in response to
Newt Spooner's signal.
"What mout thet contraption be over yon?" demanded the mountaineer in a
surly voice, as he indicated with a jerk of his head the object of his
curiosity.
The servant laughed long and loud. He was a young negro and mounted. By
putting spurs to his steed he could escape any penalty of insolence, and
if the mountaineer dislikes the negro it is with no greater scorn than
that which the negro feels for the poor white. When he had finished
laughing his white teeth continued to gleam in a wide grin.
"Thet-thar contraption," he mimicked with an excellent impersonation of
the nasal drawl in which he had been questioned, "is a platfawm. It's
shorely an' p'intedly a platfawm. Our folks is gwine ter have a platfawm
dance ternight. Saxton's band's coming frum Lexin'ton ter play de music,
and all de quality folks'll be hyar."
At the sneer of the servant's manner, Newt Spooner had slipped down from
the place he had assumed on the fence, and stalked menacingly out into
the road. The negro had moved his horse a little to the side and waited.
But, at the information received, Newt forgot his wrath in the
engrossment of a sudden idea. A dance! The young people would be there
in force. Perhaps among them would be the one he sought. In his country
where round dances are unknown, special invitations are not required.
Word goes out that so-and-so is giving a dance at such-and-such a point,
and the countryside troops thither for shuffle and jig and wassail.
"I reckon," said Newt slowly, "I reckon I'll be thar."
The black boy let out a loud guffaw. He leaned back with one hand
supporting his weight on the haunches of his mount, and whooped his
mirthful derision to the open heavens. Newt gazed at him, first in
astonishment; then in passion.
"What air ye a-laughin' at, nigger?" he inquired with low-pitched
ferocity of voice.
The boy gathered up his reins, and, under the pressure of his spurred
heel, the colt was away in a gallop.
"I may be a nigger," he flung back over his shoulder, "but I ain't no
po' white trash. The likes of you comin' to our dance! Good Gawd!" A
roar of ironical laughter followed in the wake of clattering hoofs,
while Newt Spooner, his thin face working with a positive mania of
fury, hurled rock after rock at the retreating figure.
Slowly the mountain boy walked back toward town, his black suit already
whitened with a fine coating of turnpike dust.
As he neared the court-house, he quickened his step, for a dense crowd
was gathered at its front, and he knew that the speaking must be in
progress. His people would be in the throng and they would be armed. If
he were going to the dance to-night, he needed a gun, and yet his
craftiness automatically set a restraint on his impatient haste. Should
he rush headlong into that crowd just on the verge of trouble, he might
rush also into arrest. The applause and laughter with which the crowd
just now jostled shoulders told him that nothing had yet occurred to
break the peace or equipoise of the occasion; but that something
was to happen he knew, and the knowledge made him cautious. A
distinguished-looking gentleman with white hair was speaking from an
improvised stand, and, as the ex-convict drew near the outskirts of the
crowd, he found himself standing near a man who wore a blue coat, and
leaned on a stout hickory staff. The partial uniform of this individual
proclaimed a town marshal, and the badge on the breast corroborated the
proclamation. It occurred to Newt that to be talking with an officer of
the law when the shooting began would constitute an excellent alibi. So
he stopped, and touching the officer on the elbow, inquired:
"Stranger, who mout thet man be, thet's a-talkin'?"
The policeman turned and regarded him out of a broad, good-humored face,
in which shrewd, but merry eyes twinkled.
Newt wanted that officer to know him the next time they met, and to
remember him definitely, so he returned the gaze with one frank and
unblinking.
"That's General Braden, sonny," the town marshal amiably enlightened;
"he's just introducin' the Honorable Cale Floyd. That's Floyd now."
"I hain't in yore way, am I, stranger?" questioned Newt humbly by way of
further emphasizing his presence. "I 'low ef I hain't, I'll jest stay
right hyar an' listen at him speak."
The officer laughed.
"Stay right where you are, sonny," he invited; "I expect it's as good a
place as any." And then, to the boy's delight, the other laid a hand
lightly on his shoulder.
The young man from the waters of Troublesome wore a blank face, although
it was difficult. He had told himself that he felt no hostility for this
prosecutor who had convicted him. Yet, now, as he saw the tall man step
forward to take his place on the platform, remove his felt hat and shake
back the black hair which fell, mane-like, over his forehead, Newt
acknowledged a sense of gladness that he was to be killed.
The Honorable Cale Floyd had fought a bitter battle back there in the
lawless hills for the vindication of law. He had walked in the shadow
of death and had been deprived of office; ostracized like Aristides
because he was "too just a man."
Now, he had come down here to the cultured bluegrass, and was being
pointed out as something of a hero. Clients with well-filled purses
brought their litigation to his office. And it came to pass that in the
glow of unwonted recognition, the simplicity with which he had faced
peril back there in his own country was slipping from him. He felt the
theatric quality of the moment, and struck something of a pose as the
crowd took in his tall figure and broad shoulders and country lawyer's
make-up of frock coat and black string tie. He had recognized that it
was more effective to appear the backwoods lawyer than the well-groomed
attorney. His mentality would flash more startlingly from six feet of
rugged mountaineer, and his attainments would limn themselves forth in a
more impressive forcefulness. In short, the Honorable Cale Floyd was not
now averse to capitalizing his past vicissitudes.
So he shook back his hair, and stood smiling with the June sun slanting
to his fearlessly rugged features and touching them like a face cast in
bronze. Then he began to talk. He warmed into his subject, gathering a
wine-like thrill from the interested attention of the upturned faces;
faces which long jury experience made as readable to him as clear type,
and he threw more and more fire into his utterance, until he was borne
out of himself and into a realm of eloquence. With a characteristic
gesture, he leaned far outward and stretched his hand, index-like,
toward the edge of the crowd. Thus had he turned often from the jury-box
and scourged with figure and invective the man in the prisoner's dock.
It chanced that all unconsciously the finger went like an aimed weapon
to the face of Newt Spooner, and straightway the boy saw red. From his
mind passed the white brick facade of the bluegrass court-house, the sea
of hats and the field of shoulders, and in their stead there rose again
before him the dingy interior in Jackson, where he sat beside his
counsel, while this same man, with this same gesture, loosed on his head
all the bolts of the law's castigation. And at that same moment, playing
with hypnotic intensity on his audience, the Honorable Cale Floyd fell
instantly and suddenly silent, holding his bronze-like pose of
outstretched arm and hand. It was only for a momentary pause: an
oratorical trick of contrast and emphasis, out of which his voice would
presently ring again in compelling tones. But in that instant of quiet
there rose from the center of the crowd a sudden shuffle and a muffled
outcry accompanied by a swaying of bodies. It was so close to the stand
that the speaker, looking off more widely, was conscious of it only with
annoyance for a marred effect. But, as he drew himself erect once more,
to the undefined disturbance was added an outbreak of oaths, and, before
they had died away, several close pistol reports came spitting sharply
from the front, and little wisps of blue smoke twisted upward above the
hats. At once there followed a general pandemonium, shoving, shouting,
the shrill screams of women; an effort among the panic-stricken to get
away by climbing over those who obstructed them.
With an oath, and an eloquent sweep of the hand to his pistol-pocket,
the town marshal left Newt, who stood with an enigmatical smile on his
lips, and went ploughing through the scattering mob toward the center of
the disturbance. For a breathing space, the speaker stood leaning on the
rail of the platform and looking out with no expression on his face save
one of chagrined interruption.
Newt Spooner suppressed a snarl of contempt.
"By God," he muttered to himself, "ef they didn't go an' plumb miss
him!"
But, as he was still growling inwardly with disgust, the attorney
started to step back, reeled and crumpled limply to the floor of the
platform.