Across in Virginia, Sally Turk, the wife of the dead man and the sister
of the accused, had rocked her anaemic baby to sleep after a long period
of twilight fretfulness and stood looking down into its crib awhile with
a distrait and numbed face of distress. She was leaving it to the care
of another and did not know when she would come back.
"I'm right glad leetle Ken's done tuck ter ther bottle," she said with
forced cheerfulness to the hag-like Mirandy Sloane. "Mebby when I gits
back thar'll be a mite more flesh on them puny leetle bones of his'n."
Her words caught sob-like in her throat as she wheeled resolutely and
caught up her shawl and bonnet.
Out at the tumble-down stable she saddled and mounted a mule that
plodded with a limp through a blackness like a sea of freezing ink, and
she shivered as she sat in the old carpet-cushioned side-saddle and
flapped a long switch monotonously upon the flanks of her
"ridin'-critter."
The journey she was undertaking lay toward the town where her brother
was "hampered" in jail, but she turned at a cross-road two miles short
of that objective and kept to the right until she came to a two-storied
house set in an orchard: a place of substantial and commodious size. Its
windows were shuttered now and it loomed only as a squarish block of
denser shadow against the formless background of night. All shapes were
neutralized under a clouded and gusty sky.
Dogs rushed out barking blatantly as the woman slid from her saddle,
but at the sound of her voice they stilled their clamour--for dogs are
not informed when old friendships turn to enmity.
The front door opened upon her somewhat timid knock, but it opened only
to a slit and the face that peered out was that of a woman who, when she
recognized the outer voice, seemed half minded to slam it again in
refusal of welcome. Curiosity won a minor victory, though, over
hostility, and the mistress of the house slipped out, holding the door
inhospitably closed at her back.
"Fer ther land's sakes, what brings ye hyar, Sally Turk?" she challenged
in the rasp of hard unreceptiveness, and the visitor replied in a note
of pleading, "I come ter see Will ... I've jest _got_ ter see Will."
The other woman still held the door as she retorted harshly: "All thet
you an' Will hev got ter do kin be done in co'te termorrer, I reckon."
But Sally Turk clutched the arm of Will Turk's wife in fingers that were
tight with the obduracy of despair.
"I've got ter see Will," she pleaded. "Fer God's sake, don't deny me.
Hit's ther only thing I asks of ye now--an' hit's a matter of master
int'rest ter Will es well es me. I'll go down on my knees ef hit'll
pleasure him--but I've _got_ ter see him."
There was something in the colourless monotony of that reiteration which
Lindy Turk, whose teeth were chattering in the icy wind, could not deny.
With a graceless concession she opened the door.
"Come inside, then," she ordered, brusquely. "I'll find out will he see
ye--but I misdoubts hit."
Inside the room the woman who had ridden across the hills sank into a
low, hickory-withed chair by the simmering hearth and hunched there,
faint and wordless. Now that she had arrived, the ordeal before her
loomed big with threat and fright, and Lindy, instead of calling her
husband, stood stolidly with arms akimbo and a merciless glitter of
animosity in her eyes.
"Hit's a right qu'ar an' insolent thing fer ye ter do," she finally
observed, "comin' over hyar thisaway, on ther very eve of Ken Thornton's
trial."
"I've got ter see Will," echoed the strained voice by the hearth, as
though those words were the only ones she knew. "I've got ter see Will."
"When John war murdered over thar--afore yore baby was borned," went on
Lindy as though she were reading from a memorized indictment, "Will stud
ready ter succour an' holp ye every fashion he could. Then hit come ter
light thet 'stid of defendin' ther fame of yore dead husband ye aimed
ter stand by ther man thet slew him. Ye even named yore brat atter his
coldblooded murderer."
The huddled supplicant in the chair straightened painfully out of her
dejection of attitude and her words seemed to come from far away.
"He war my brother," she said, simply.
"Yes, an' John Turk wasn't nothin' but yore husband," flashed back the
scathing retort. "Ye give hit out ter each an' every thet all yore
sympathy war with ther man thet kilt him--an' from thet day on Will an'
me war done with ye. Now we aims ter see thet brother of yourn
hanged--and hit's too tardy ter come a beggin' an' pleadin'."
Kenneth Thornton's sister rose and stood swaying on her feet, holding
herself upright by the back of the chair. Her eyes were piteous in their
suffering.
"Fer God's sake, Lindy," she begged, "don't go on denyin' me no more. We
used ter love one another ... when I was married ye stud up with me ...
when yore fust baby war born I set by yore bedside ... now I'm nigh
heart-broke!"
Her voice, hysterically uncontrolled, shrilled almost to a scream, and
the door of the other room opened to show Will Turk, shirt-sleeved and
sombre of visage, standing on its threshold.
"What's all this ter-do in hyar?" he demanded gruffly, then seeing the
wife of his dead brother he stiffened and his chin thrust itself outward
into bulldog obduracy.
"I kain't no fashion git shet of her," explained the wife as though she
felt called upon to explain her ineffectiveness as a sentinel.
Will Turk's voice came in the crispness of clipped syllables. "Lindy, I
don't need ye no more, right now. I reckon I kin contrive ter git rid of
this woman by myself."
Then as the door closed upon the wife, the sister-in-law moved slowly
forward and she and the man stood gazing at each other, while between
them lay six feet of floor and mountains of amassed animosities.
"Ef ye've come hyar ter plead fer Ken," he warned her at last, "ye comes
too late. Ef John's bein' yore husband didn't mean nuthin' ter ye, his
bein' my brother does mean a master lot ter _me_--an' ther man thet kilt
him's goin' ter die."
"Will," she began, brokenly, "ye was always like a real brother ter me
in ther old days ... hain't ye got no pity left in yore heart fer me...?
Don't ye remember nothin' but ther day thet John died...?"
The drooping moustaches seemed to droop lower and the black brows
contracted more closely.
"I hain't fergot nothin'.... I wanted ter befriend ye so long es I
could ... outside my own fam'ly I didn't love no person better, but thet
only made me hate ye wusser when ye turned traitor ter our blood."
She stepped unsteadily forward and caught at his hand, but the man
jerked it away as from an infection.
"But don't ye know thet John misused me, Will? Don't ye know thet he war
a-killin' me right then?"
"I takes notice ye didn't nuver make no complaint till ye tuck thought
of Ken's _dee_fence, albeit men knowed thar was bad blood betwixt him
an' John. Now I aims ter let Ken pay what he owes in lawful fashion....
I aims ter hang him."
Sally retreated to the hearth and stood leaning there weakly. With
fumbling fingers she brought from inside her dress a soiled sheet of
folded paper and drew a long breath of resolution, passing one hand over
her face where the hair fell wispy and straggling. Then she braced
herself with all the strength and self-will that was left her.
"Ken didn't nuver kill John," she said, slowly, forcing a voice that
seemed to have hardly breath enough to carry it to audibility. "I kilt
him."
For an instant the room was as still as a tomb with only lifeless
tenants, then Will Turk took one quick step forward, to halt again, and
his voice broke into an amazed and incredulous interjection:
"_You_ kilt him?"
"Yes, I kilt him.... He hed done beat me an' he war chokin' me.... His
misuse of me war what him an' Ken fell out erbout.... I war too proud
ter tell anybody else ... but Ken knowed.... I was faintin' away with
John's fingers on my throat.... We was right by ther table whar his own
pistol lay.... I grabbed hit up an' shot. Ken come ter ther door jest es
hit went off."
Facing this new statement of alleged fact the brother of the dead man
remained in his unmoving posture of amazed silence for a space, then he
responded with a scornfully disbelieving laugh. In a woman one would
have called it hysterical, but his words, when he spoke, were steady
enough.
"Thet's a right slick story, Sally, but hit don't pull no wool over my
eyes. Hit's too tardy fer right-minded folks ter believe hit."
The woman sought to answer, but her moving lips gave no sound. She had
thought the world stood always ready to accept self-confessed guilt, and
now her throat worked spasmodically until at last her dumbness was
conquered.
"Does ye think ... hit's ther sort of lie I'd tell willin'ly?" she
asked. "Don't hit put me right whar Ken's at now ... with ther gallows
ahead of me?" She broke off, then her words rose to a shrill pitch of
excitement.
"Fer God's sake, heed me in time! Ye seeks ter hang somebody fer killin'
John. I'm ther right one. Hang me!"
Will Turk paced the room for several meditative turns with his head low
on his breast and his hands gripped at his back. Then he halted and
stood facing her.
"What does ye aim ter do with thet thar paper?" he demanded.
"Hit's my confession--all wrote out ... an' ready ter be swore ter," she
told him. "Ef ye won't heed me, I've got ter give hit ter ther jedge--in
open co'te."
But the man who gave orders to judges shook his head.
"Hit won't avail ye," he assured her with a voice into which the flinty
quality had returned. "Hit's jest evidence in Ken's favour.... Hit don't
jedgmatically sottle nothin'. I reckon bein' a woman ye figgers ye kin
come cl'ar whilst Ken would be shore ter hang--but I'll see thet nothin'
don't come of thet."
"Does ye mean"--Sally was already so ghost pale that she could not turn
paler--"Does ye mean they'll go on an' hang him anyhow?"
Will Turk's head came back and his shoulders straightened.
"Mayhap they will--ef I bids 'em to," he retorted.
"Listen at me, Will," the woman cried out in such an anguish of
beseeching that even her present auditor could not escape the need of
obeying. "Listen at me because ye knows in yore heart I hain't lyin'.
I'm tellin' ther whole truth thet I was afeared ter tell afore. I let
him take ther blame because I was skeered--an' because ther baby was
goin' ter be borned. I hain't nuver been no liar, Will, an' I hain't one
now!"
The man had half turned his back as if in final denial of her plea, yet
now, after a momentary pause, he turned back again and she thought that
there was something like a glimmer of relenting back of his gruffness as
he gave curt permission: "Go on, then, I'm hearkenin'."
Late into that night they talked, but it was the woman who said most
while the man listened in non-committal taciturnity. His memory flashed
disturbingly back to the boyhood days and testified for the supplicant
with reminders of occasional outcroppings of cruelty in his brother as a
child. That outward guise of suavity which men had known in John Turk he
knew for a coat under which had been worn another and harsher garment of
self-will.
But against these admissions the countryside dictator doggedly stiffened
his resistance. His brother had been killed and the stage was set for
reprisal. His moment was at hand and it was not to be lightly forfeited.
Yet to take vengeance on an innocent scapegoat would bring no true
appeasement to the deep bruise of outraged loyalty. If Ken Thornton had
assumed a guilt, not his own, to protect a woman, he had no quarrel with
Ken Thornton, and he could not forget that until that day of the
shooting this man had been his friend.
He must make no mistake by erring on the side of passion nor must he,
with just vengeance in his grasp, let it slip because a woman had
beguiled him with lies and tears.
Finally the brother-in-law went over to where Sally was still sitting
with her eyes fixed on him in a dumb tensity of waiting.
"Ye compelled me ter harken ter ye," he said, "but I hain't got no
answer ready fer ye yit. Hit all depends on whether ye're tellin' me
ther truth or jest lyin' ter save Ken's neck, and thet needs ter lie
studied. Ye kin sleep hyar ternight anyhow, an' termorrer when I've
talked with ther state lawyer I'll give ye my answer--but not afore
then."
Will Turk did not sleep that night. His thoughts were embattled with the
conflict of many emotions, and morning found him hollow-eyed.
In its sum total, this man's use of his power had been unquestionable
abuse. Terrorization and the prostitution of law had been its keystone
and arch, but he had not yet surrendered his self-respect, because he
thought of himself as a strong man charged with responsibility and
accountable to his own conscience. Now he remembered the Ken Thornton
who had once been almost a brother. Old affections had curdled into
wormwood bitterness, but if the woman told the truth, her narration
altered all that. Somehow he could feel no resentment at all against
her. If _she_ had killed John, she had acted only at the spur of
desperation, and she had been feminine weakness revolting against brutal
strength. As he pondered his determination wavered and swung to and fro,
pendulum fashion. If she were lying--and he would hardly blame her for
that, either--he would be her dupe to show mercy and likewise, if she
were lying, mercy would be weakness.
Sally Turk rested no more peacefully than he that night, and when in
the gray of dawn she looked searchingly into his face across the kitchen
table, she could read nothing from the stony emptiness that kept guard
over his emotions.
A little later she rode at his saddle skirt in a crucial suffering of
suspense, and whenever she cast an agonized glance at him she saw her
companion's face staring stiffly ahead, flintily devoid of any
self-revelation.
Once she ventured to demand, "Whatever ye decides, Will, will them
co'te-house fellers heed ye, does ye reckon?"
For a moment Turk glanced sidewise with narrowed eyes.
"I don't seek ter persuade them fellers," he made brief and pointed
reply, "I orders 'em."
At the court house door Will Turk left her with a nod and went direct
into the judge's chamber and the Commonwealth's attorney followed
him--but of what law was being laid down there, she remained in
heart-wracking ignorance.
Beyond the court house doors, plastered with notices of sheriff's sales
and tax posters, the county seat simmered with an air of excitement that
morning.
Street loungers, waiting for the trial to begin, knew the faces of those
who had been neighbours, friendly or hostile, for many years; but to-day
there were strangers in town as well.
Soon after daylight these unknown men had arrived, and one could see
that they came from a place where life was primitive; for even here,
where the breadth of a street was at their disposal, they did not ride
abreast but in single file, as men do who are accustomed to threading
narrow trails. They were led by a patriarchal fellow with a snowy beard
and a face of simple dignity, and behind him came a squat and twisted
hunchback who met every inquisitive gaze with a sharp challenge that
discouraged staring. Back of these two were more than a dozen others,
and though their faces were all quiet and their bearing courteous,
rifles lay balanced across their saddle-bows.
But most challenging in interest of all the newcomers was a young woman
whose bronzed hair caught the glint of morning sunlight and whose dark
eyes were deep and soft like forest pools.
"Ther Kaintuckians," murmured onlookers along the broken sidewalks as
that cavalcade dismounted in the court house square to file quietly
through the entrance doors, and eyes narrowed in a sinister augury of
hostile welcome.
These visitors seated themselves together in a body on one side of the
aisle and when the old bell had clanged its summons and Sheriff Beaver
sang out his "Oyez, Oyez," the judge looked down upon them with more
than passing interest.
From the door at one side of the bench Ken Thornton was brought in and
as a gratuitous mark of indignity he came with his wrists manacled.
But from the Kentucky group, even from Dorothy herself, that
circumstance wrung no murmur of resentment and the accused stood for a
moment before he took his seat with eyes ranging over the place until
they came to the section of the dingy room where he encountered the
unscowling faces of friends.
There were his supporters who had come so far to raise their voices in
his behalf, and perhaps to share the brunt of hatred that had been fired
into blazing against him, and there--he felt a surge of emotion under
which his face burned--was Dorothy herself!
They had not brought her to the jail to see him, and on the advice of
Jim Rowlett she had not signalized her coming by insistence--so their
eyes met without prior warning to the man.
It was to Kenneth Thornton as if there were sunlight in one corner of
that cobwebbed room with its unwashed windows and its stale smells, and
elsewhere hung the murk of little hope. A few staunch friends, at least,
he had, but they were friends among enemies, and he steeled himself for
facing the stronger forces.
Back of the rostrum where the judge sat squalidly enthroned a line of
dusty and cobwebbed volumes tilted tipsily in ironical reminder of the
fact that this law-giver took his cue less from their ancient principles
than from whispers alien to their spirit.
A shuffling of muddy feet ensued; then a lesser sound that came with the
giving out of many breaths; a sound that has no name but which has been
known since days when men and women settled back in the circus of the
Caesars and waited for the lions to be turned into the arena where the
victims waited.
From the bench was drawled the routine query, "Has the Commonwealth any
motions?" and the Commonwealth's attorney rose to his feet and
straightened the papers on his desk.
"May it please your Honour," he said, slowly, "in the case of the
Commonwealth against Kenneth Thornton, charged with murder, now pending
on this docket, I wish to enter a motion of dismissal and to ask that
your Honour exonerate the bond of the defendant."
The man in the prisoner's dock had come braced against nerve-trying, but
now he bent forward in an amazement that he could not conceal, and from
the back of the courtroom forward ran an inarticulate sound from human
throats that needed no words to voice its incredulity--its
disappointment.
There was a light rapping of the gavel and the state's representative
went evenly on:
"The trial of this defendant would only entail a fruitless cost upon
the state. I hold here, duly attested, the confession of Sally Turk,
sister of the accused and widow of the deceased, that it was she and not
Kenneth Thornton who shot John Turk to death. I have sworn out a warrant
for this woman's arrest, and will ask the sheriff to execute it
forthwith and take her into custody."
Kenneth Thornton was on his feet with a short protest shaping itself on
his lips, but his eyes met those of his sister who rose from her place
against the wall as her name was spoken and he read in them a
contentment that gave him pause and an unspoken plea for silence.
Answering to the restraining hand of his own lawyer on his elbow he sank
back into his seat with a swimming head and heard the calm, almost
purring voice from the bench directing, "Mr. Clerk, let the order be
entered." After that, astonishment mounted to complete dumfounding as he
saw standing in the aisle Will Turk, the backbone and energy of the
entire prosecution--and heard his voice addressing the judge:
"May it please your Honour, I'd love ter be tuck on Sally Turk's bond
when ther time comes. I've done satisfied myself thet she kilt my
brother in self _dee_fence."