When Parish Thornton had brought his captive down the slope that
afternoon he had left his rifle in safe concealment, not wishing to
hamper himself with any weapon save the revolver, which had never left
his palm until this moment.
Now with the instant gone in which he might have used it to stem the
tide of invasion, he was not fool enough to fire. A silent and steady
current of black-clad humanity was still flowing inward across the
threshold, and every man was armed.
Yet at the ring of victorious elation in Bas Rowlett's voice the impulse
to strike down that master of deceit before his own moment came almost
overpowered him--almost but not quite.
He knew that the bark of his weapon would bring chorused retort from
other firearms, and that Dorothy might fall. As it was, the mob had come
for him alone, so he walked over and laid his revolver quietly down on
the table.
But the girl had seen the by-play and had rightly interpreted its
meaning. For her the future held no promise--except a tragedy she could
not face, and for a distracted moment she forgot even her baby as she
reacted to the bitterness of her vendetta blood. So she caught up Hump
Doane's rifle that still rested against the wall near her hand and threw
the muzzle to Rowlett's breast.
"I'll git _you_, anyhow," she screamed between clenched teeth, and it
was a promise she would have kept; a promise that would have turned
that room into a shambles had not one of the masked figures been
dexterous enough in his intervention to reach her and snatch the gun
from her grasp--still unfired.
Dorothy stepped back then, her eyes staring with the fury of failure as
she gazed at the man who had disarmed her--while one by one other dark
and uniformed figures continued to enter and range themselves about the
wall.
The night-rider who held the captured rifle had not spoken, but the
woman's eye, as it ranged up and down, caught sight of a shoe--and she
recognized a patch. That home-mending told her that the enemy who had
balked her in the last poor comfort of vengeance was Sim Squires, a
member of her own household, and her lips moved in their impulse to call
out his name in denunciation and revilement.
They moved and then, in obedience to some sudden afterthought, closed
tight again without speaking, but her eyes did speak in silent anathema
of scorn--and though she did not know or suspect it, the thoughts
mirrored in them were read and interpreted by the mob-leader.
Dorothy crossed the floor of the room, ringed with its border of grimly
cloaked humanity, and took her stand by the side of the man who leaned
stoically at the corner of his hearth. At least she could do that much
in declaration of loyalty.
Thornton himself folded his arms and, as his eyes ran over the anonymous
beings who had come to kill him, he fell back on the only philosophy
left him: that of dying with such as unwhining demeanour as should rob
them of triumph in their gloating.
At length the door closed, and it was with a dramatic effect of climax
that the last man who entered bore, coiled on his arm, the slender but
stout rope which was to be both actual instrument and symbol of their
purpose there.
Parish felt Dorothy, whose two hands were clasped about his folded arm,
wince and shudder at the sinister detail, and unwilling to remain
totally passive, even with the end so near and so certain, he chose to
speak before they spoke to him.
"I knows right well what ye've come fer, men," he said, and in the level
steadiness of his voice was more of disdain than abjectness, "but I
hain't got no lamentation ter make, an' somehow I hain't es much
terrified as mebby I ought ter be."
"Ye've got a right good license ter be terrified," announced the
disguised voice of the masked leader, "onlessen death's a thing ye
favours over life. Even ef ye does thet, hangin's a right shameful way
ter die."
But Parish Thornton shook his head.
"Hit hain't hangin' hitself thet's shameful," he corrected the other,
"hit's what a man hangs fer." He paused, then with the note of entire
seriousness he inquired: "I reckon ye don't aim ter deny me ther
privilege of sayin' a few words fust, does ye? I've always heered thet
they let a man talk afore he got hung."
"Go on," growled the other, "but mebby ye'd better save hit, twell we've
done tried ye. We aims ter give ye a hearin' afore ye dies."
Thornton inclined his head gravely, more sensible of the clutching grasp
of his wife's fingers on his tensed biceps than of more fateful matters.
"When ye gits through hangin' me," he told them by way of valedictory,
"I wants ye ter recall thet thar's somethin' ye hain't kilt yit in these
hills--an' won't nuver kill. Thar's a sperit that some of us hes
fostered hyar, and hit'll go on jest ther same without us--hit's a
bigger thing then any man, an' hit's goin' ter dog ye till hit gits ye
all--every sneakin' mother's son an' every murderin' man-jack of yore
sorry outfit! What things we've ondertook hain't a-goin' ter die with me
ner with no other man ye gang murders--an' when ther high co'te sets
next time, thar'll be soldiers hyar thet hain't none affrighted by ther
repute ye b'ars!"
He paused, then added soberly, yet with a conviction that carried
persuasiveness: "Thet's all I've got ter say, an' albeit _I'm_ ther
victim right now, God in Heaven knows I pities all of ye from ther
bottom of my heart--because I'm confident that amongst ye right now air
some siv'ral thet, save fer bein' deluded by traitors an' cravens, air
good men."
The individual who was acting as spokesman bent forward and thrust his
face close to that of the man they had come to lynch.
"Nuther yore brag nor yore threats hain't agoin' ter avail ye none,
Parish Thornton--because yore time is done come. Thar's a hugeous big
tree astandin' out thar by yore front door, an' afore an hour's gone by,
ye're goin' ter be swingin' from hit. Folks norrates thet yore woman an'
you sets a heap of store by thet old walnuck an' calls hit ther roof
tree, an' believes hit holds a witch-spell ter safeguard ye.... We're
goin' ter see kin hit save ye now."
He paused, and at the mention of the walnut Dorothy clutched her hands
to her breast and caught her breath, but the man went on:
"Ye hain't no native-born man hyar, Thornton, albeit ye've done sought
ter run ther country like some old-time king or lord beyond ther
water.... Ye hain't nuthin' but a trespassin' furriner, nohow--an' we
don't love no tyrant. This roof-tree hain't yourn by no better right
then ther nest thet ther cuckoo steals from ther bird thet built
hit...."
Again he paused, then, added with a sneer:
"We don't even grant ye ownership of thet old walnuck tree--but we aims
ter loan hit ter ye long enough ter hang on." He halted and looked about
the place, then with cheap theatricism demanded:
"Who accuses this man? Let him stand ter ther front."
Three or four dark figures moved unhurriedly toward the centre of the
circle, but one who had not been rehearsed in his part stepped with a
more eager haste to the fore, and that one was Bas Rowlett.
"I don't know es I've rightly got no license ter speak up--amongst men
that I kain't _ree_cognize," he made hypocritical declaration, "but yit,
I kain't hardly hold my peace, because ye come in good season fer
me--an' saved my life."
After a momentary pause, as if waiting for permission to be heard, he
went on:
"This man thet I saved from death one time when somebody sought ter kill
him laywayed me an hour or so back, an' atter he'd done disarmed an'
maltreated me, he fotched me home hyar ter insult me some more in front
of his woman--afore he kilt me in cold blood.... He done them things
because I wouldn't censure an' disgust you men thet calls yoreself ther
riders."
Parish Thornton smiled derisively as he listened to that indictment,
then he capped it with an ironic amendment.
"We all knows ye're ther true leader of this murder-gang, Bas--ye don't
need ter be bashful erbout speakin' out yore mind ter yore own slaves."
Rowlett wheeled, his swarthy face burning to its high cheekbones with a
flush that spread and dyed his bull-like neck.
"All right, then," he barked out, at last casting aside all subterfuge.
"Ef they h'arkens ter what I says I'll tell 'em ter string ye up, hyar
an' now, ter thet thar same tree you an' yore woman sots sich store by!
I'll tell 'em ter teach Virginny meddlers what hit costs ter come
trespassin' in Kaintuck." He was breathing thickly with the excited
reaction from his recent terror and despair.
"Men," he bellowed, almost jubilantly, "don't waste no time--ther
gallows tree stands ready. Hit's right thar by ther front porch."
Dorothy had listened in a stunned silence. Her face was parchment-pale
but she was hardly able yet to grasp the sudden turn of events to
irremediable tragedy.
The irrevocable meaning of the thing she had feared in her dreams seemed
too vast to comprehend when it drew near her, and she had not clearly
realized that minutes now--and few of them--stood between her husband
and his death. Her scornful eyes had been dwelling on the one figure she
had recognized: the figure of Sim Squires, whom it had never occurred to
her to distrust.
But when several night-riders pushed her brusquely from her place beside
her man, and drew his hands together at his back and began whipping
cords about his unresisting wrists, the horror broke on her in its
ghastly fullness and nearness.
The stress they laid on the mention of the tree had brought her out of
the coma of her dazed condition into an acute agony of reality.
There was a fiendish symbolism in their intent.... The man they called a
usurper must die on the very tree that gave their home its significance,
and no other instrument of vengeance would satisfy them. The old
bitterness had begun generations ago when the renegade who "painted his
face and went to the Indians" had sought to destroy it, and happiness
with it. Now his descendant was renewing the warfare on the spot where
it had begun, and the tree was again the centre of the drama.
Dorothy Thornton thought that her heart would burst with the terrific
pressure of her despair and helplessness.
Then her knees weakened and she would have fallen had she not reeled
back against the corner of the mantel, and a low, heart-broken moan
came, long drawn, from her lips.
There was nothing to be done--yet every moment before death was a moment
of life, and submission meant death. In the woman's eyes blazed an
unappeasable hunger for battle, and as they met those of her husband
they flashed the unspoken exhortation: "Don't submit ... die fighting!"
It was the old dogma of mountain ferocity, but Parish Thornton knew its
futility and shook his head. Then he answered her silent incitement in
words:
"Hit's too late, Dorothy.... I'd only git you kilt as well as me.... I
reckon they hain't grudgin' _you_ none, es things stands now."
But the mob leader laughed, and turning his face to the wife, he
ruthlessly tore away even that vestige of reassurance.
"We hain't makin' no brash promises erbout ther woman, Thornton," he
brutally announced. "I read in her eyes jest now thet she _ree_co'nized
one of us--an' hit hain't safe ter know too much."
They were still working at the ropes on the prisoner's wrists and the
knots were not yet secure. The man had gauged his situation and resigned
himself to die like a slaughter-house animal, instead of a mountain
lion--in order to save his wife. Now they denied him that.
Suddenly his face went black and his eyes became torrential with fury.
His lunging movement was as swift and powerful as a tiger-spring, and
his transition from quiet to earthquake violence as abrupt and deadly as
the current of the electric chair.
His shoulders and wrists ripped at their bonds, and the men busied about
them were hurled away as with a powder blast. The arms came free and the
hands seized up a chair. A human tornado was at work in a space too
crowded for the use of firearms; and when the insufficient weapon had
been shattered into splinters and fallen in worthless bits there were
broken crowns and prostrate figures in that room.
Faces were marked with bruise and blood and laceration--but the odds
were too overwhelmingly uneven, and at last they bore him down, pounded
and kicked, to the puncheon floor, and when they lifted him to his feet
again the ropes that fastened him were firm enough to hold.
Then Parish Thornton spoke again: spoke with a passion that seemed
almost as destructive as the short-lived chair he had been swinging
flail-like, though the panting exertion made his voice come in
disjointed and sob-like gasps.
"Ye hain't done yit," he shouted into their maddened faces as they
crowded and yapped about him. "By dint of numbers ye've done tuck me
alive, but thar's still a reckonin' ahead!"
Above the answering chorus of jeers rang his berserk fury of defiance.
"Ye kin go ahead an' hang me now--an' be damned ter ye! Ye kin even
murder a woman ef ye've got a mind ter--but thar's a baby in this house
thet's comin' ter manhood some day."
"Ye won't be hyar ter train him up fer vengeance," came the sneering
voice of Bas Rowlett who had stood clear of that conflict; and glaring
at him Thornton managed a bitter laugh.
"He won't need no trainin' up," he retorted. "Hit's bred in his blood
an' his bone ter hate snakes an' kill 'em. He's drunk hit in at his
mother's breast an' breathed hit in ther air.... He'll settle our scores
some day!"