Sim Squires knew that when the brief farce of the trial took place he
would be called forward to testify with a few prearranged lies. In his
mouth was a pebble, put there to change his voice--but in his mutinous
heart was an obsession of craving to see Bas Rowlett in such a debased
position as that which Parish Thornton occupied--for, of all men, he
feared and hated Bas most.
This unrelished participation in the mob spirit was more abhorrent than
it had been before. The scorn of Dorothy's eyes had a scorpion sting
that he could not escape--and this woman had given his life an
atmosphere of friendliness and kindliness which it had not known before.
"Now," announced the masked spokesman, "we're well-nigh ready, an' thar
hain't no virtue in bein' dilitary--albeit we don't aim ter hang him
untried. Witness Number One, come forward."
Witness Number One was Sim Squires, and as though his tongue had been
stricken with sudden dumbness and his limbs with paralysis, he hung back
when he had been called. Slowly he looked at Parish Thornton, whose face
was pale, but set once more to the calm of resoluteness--and at the
ghost-terror and the lingering contempt in the deep and suffering eyes
of the wife.
"Thar's a man hyar in this room," began Sim Squires, "thet's done been
seekin' evi_dence_ erginst ther riders, an' he's done secured a lavish
of hit, too." So far, his words were running in expected grooves, and
as the voice went on a little indistinct because of the pebble under the
tongue, his impatient audience accorded him only a perfunctory
attention.
"He's done hed spies amongst ye an' he's got evi_dence_ thet no co'te
kain't fail ter convict on," proceeded the witness, slowly. "He aims ter
penitenshery _you_," his finger rose and settled, pointing toward the
man who had acted as spokesman, and who was Rick Joyce. Then it rose
again and fell on others, as Sim added, "an' _you_--an' _you_!"
"We don't aim ter give him no chanst," interrupted Joyce, and it was
then that Sim Squires branched into unanticipated ways.
Suddenly this amazing witness ripped off his mask and threw aside his
hat. Then he spat out the pebble that interfered with his enunciation
and annoyed him, and like the epilepsy victim who slides abruptly from
sane normality into his madness, the man became transformed. The
timidities that had fettered him and held him a slave to cowardice were
swept away like unconsidered drift on the tide of a passion that was
willing to court death, if vengeance could come first. He had definitely
crossed the line of allegiance and meant to swing the fatal fury of that
mob from one victim to another, or die in his effort to that end. His
eyes were the ember pupils of the madman or the martyr, his face was the
frenzied face of a man to whom ordinary considerations no longer count;
whose idea as fixed and single, and to whom personal consequences have
become unimportant. His body was rigid yet vibrant, and his voice rang
through the room as his finger rose and pointed into the face of Bas
Rowlett.
"Thet man," he shouted, "hes bore ther semblance of yore friend, but he
aims ter _dee_stroy ye.... I knows because I've done been his slave an'
he's told me so ... he aims ter hev ye murder Parish Thornton fer him
fust ... an' then ter penitenshery ye fer doin' his dirty work. Ye
hain't nothin' on God's green y'arth but only his dupes!"
Squires paused for breath, and instead of the clamour and outcry for
which he had braced himself he encountered a hushed stillness through
which he could hear the hammering of his own heart.
Rowlett had started to bellow out an enraged denial, but he had swiftly
reconsidered and chosen instead to treat the accusation with a quieter
and more telling contempt. Now he laughed derisively as he turned toward
Joyce.
"I reckon," he suggested, "I don't even need ter gainsay no sich damn
lie es thet, does I?"
But of late there had been so much traitorousness that no man knew whom
he could trust. Now to Rowlett's astonished discomfiture he recognized
the stern and ominous note of doubt in Joyce's response.
"Ef I was you, I wouldn't only gainsay hit, but I'd strive master hard
ter _prove_ my denial."
"I hain't done yit," shouted Sim with a new vigour of aggressiveness,
and at the sight of this human hurricane which had developed out of a
man heretofore regarded as unimportant, the tempest violence of the mob
hung suspended, inquisitive, astonished.
The tanned face of the witness had become pallid, but out of it his eyes
shot jets of fire, hysterical to madness, yet convincing in an
earnestness that transcended the fear of death and carried indubitable
conviction. His body shook with a palsy as he confronted the man whom,
next to Bas Rowlett, he had feared above all others; and now in evidence
of his impassioned sincerity he blurted out his own confession.
"I kilt Joe Joyce," announced Sim Squires, "an' I sought ter kill Parish
Thornton, too, when he fust come hyar, but I done both them deeds
because I didn't dast gainsay ther man thet bade me do 'em. His
bull-dozin' terrified me ... his power over me made me a craven, an' his
dollars in my pocket paid me fer them dasterdly jobs. Thet man war Bas
Rowlett thar!"
The leader of the mob stood for an instant with the stunned senses of an
ox struck by a cleaver, and after that first dumfounded moment he wanted
the truth, as a starving man wants food. Joe Joyce had been his nephew,
and if this witness were telling the truth it would not appease him to
take vengeance on the servant only. A more summary punishment was owing
to the master.
Now he gulped down the tight constriction of his throat and ordered, "Go
on! Tell hit all!"
Rowlett again thrust himself forward, but Rick Joyce, scarcely looking
at him, sent him reeling backward with an open-handed blow against his
chest.
With torrential and cascading onrush came the capitulation of the long
and black record against the master plotter from its beginning in
jealousy to its end in betrayal of the Ku Klux.
"He come over hyar when this man Thornton lay in jail an' sought ter
make love ter thet woman," shouted the frenzied witness, but Dorothy,
who had been leaning unnerved and dazed against the wall, raised a
warning hand and interrupted.
"Stop!" she shouted. "I've done told Parish all thet! Whatever he heers
erbout this man, he heers from me. We don't need no other testimony!"
Then it was that the room began to waver and spin about Dorothy
Thornton, until with the drone of the hired man's voice diminishing in
her ears she fell swooning, and was lifted to a chair.
When her eyes opened--even before they opened--she was conscious again
of that voice, but now it was one of dominating confidence, stinging
with invective; scourging with accusations that could be verified;
ripping away to its unbelievable nakedness all the falsity of Bas
Rowlett's record--a voice of triumph.
In the altered attitudes of the attentive figures the woman could read
that the accuser was no longer talking to a hostile audience, but to one
capriciously grown receptive, and educated to the deceits of the
accused. They knew now how Bas had craftily set the Harpers and the
Doanes at one another's throats, and how Thornton had tranquilized them;
they knew how their own grievances against the man they had come to hang
had been trumped up from carefully nourished misconceptions. But above
all that, they saw how they themselves had been dupes and tools,
encouraged to organize and jeopardize their necks only that they might
act as executioners of Rowlett's private enemy, and then be thrown to
the wolves of the law.
"I come inter this house," declared Sim Squires, "at Bas Rowlett's
behest, ter spy on Parish Thornton--an' I j'ined ther riders fer ther
same reason--but I'm done with lyin' now! Hit's Bas Rowlett thet made a
fool of me an' seeks ter make convicts outen _you_."
He paused; then wheeling once more he walked slowly, step by step, to
where Bas Rowlett stood cowering.
"Ye come hyar ter hang ther wrong man, boys," he shouted, "but ther
right man's hyar--ther rope's hyar, an' ther tree's hyar! Hang Bas
Rowlett!"
There was a silence of grim tension over the room when the accuser's
voice fell quiet after its staccato peroration of incitement. The masked
men gave no betrayal of final sentiment yet, and the woman rose
unsteadily from her chair and pressed her hands against the tumultuous
pounding of her heart. She could not still it while she waited for the
verdict, and scarcely dared yet to hope.
Rowlett had been long trusted, and had there been left in him the
audacity for ten adroitly used minutes of boldness, he might have been
heard that night in his own defence. But Bas had, back of all his brutal
aggressions, a soul-fibre of baseness and it had wilted.
Now, with every eye turned on him, with the scales of his fate still
trembling, the accused wretch cast furtive glances toward the door,
weighing and considering the chances of escape. He abandoned that as
hopeless, opened his lips and let his jaw sag, then crouched back as
though in the shadow of the room's corner he hoped to find concealment.
"Look at him, men!" shouted Sim Squires, following up the wreck of
arrogance who through years had brow-beaten him, and becoming in turn
himself the bully. "Look at him huddlin' thar like a whipped cur-dawg!
Hain't he done es good es made confession by ther guilty meanness in his
face?"
He paused, and then with a brutal laugh he struck the cowering Rowlett
across his mouth--a blow that he had dreamed of in his sleep but never
dared to think of when awake--and Rowlett condemned himself to death
when he flinched and failed to strike back.
"Jest now, men," rushed on the exhorter, "ye seed Thornton thar facin'
death--an' he showed ye how a man kin demean himself when he thinks his
time hes come. Take yore choice between them two--an' decide which one
needs hangin'!"
Then feeding on the meat of new authority, Sim Squires, who had always
been an underling before, seized up from the hearth, where the ashes
were dead, a charred stick--and it happened to be a bit of black walnut
that had grown and died on the tree which was about to become a
gallows.
With its blackened end Sim drew a line across the planks of the floor
between himself and Rick Joyce.
"Thar, now," he passionately importuned his hearers. "Thar hain't room
in this country fer a lot of warrin' enemies thet would all be friends
save fer mischief makers. Parish Thornton hes done admitted thar's good
men amongst ye, an' we've agreed ter punish them briggatty fellers thet
kilt Pete Doane, so thar hain't rightfully no grudge left outstandin'. I
takes up my stand on this side of thet line, along with Parish Thornton,
an' I summonses every man thet's decent amongst ye all ter come over
hyar an' stand with us. We aims ter hev our hangin' without no
_dee_fault, but with a diff'rent man swingin' on ther rope!"
For the space of forty seconds that seemed as many minutes a
thunder-brooding tension hung in the stillness of the room--then without
haste or excitement Rick Joyce took off his hat and dropped it to the
floor. After it he flung his mask, and when he had crossed the line, he
turned.
"Come on, men," he gave brusque and half-peremptory invitation, "this
hyar's whar we b'longs at."
At first they responded singly and hesitantly, but soon it was a small
stampede--save for those who kept guard at the doors--and ten minutes
later Parish Thornton stood free of limb and Bas Rowlett trembled, putty
pale, in the centre of the room with bound wrists and a noose draped
across his shoulders.
"I only asks one thing of ye," faltered Bas, from whose soul had oozed
the last drop of manly resistance, "I come hyar ter crave this woman's
pardon--I still wants ter do thet--without nobody else ter heer what I
says."
"Ef she's willin' ter listen, we'll let ye talk," acceded Squires, who
found himself unchallenged spokesman now. "But we won't take no chances
with ye. When ther rope's over ther limb an' everything's ready, then
ye kin hev yore say."
* * * * *
Outside the night was as gracious as had been the last, when Old Hump
Doane had sat waiting vainly for the return of his son; but across the
moonlit sky drifted squadrons of fleecy cloud sails, and through the
plumed head of the mighty walnut sounded the restive whisper of a
breeze.
The house stood squarely blocked with cobalt shadows about it, and the
hills were brooding in blue-black immensities--but over the valley was a
flooding wash of platinum and silver.
Fragrances and quiet cadences stole along the warm current, but the song
of the whippoorwill was genuine now, and plaintive with a saddened
sweetness.
The walnut tree itself, a child of the forest that had, through
generations, been the friend of man, stood like a monument in the
silence and majesty of its own long memories.
Under its base, where the roots sank deep into the foundations of the
enduring hills, slept the dead who had loved it long ago. Perhaps in its
pungent and aromatic sap ran something of the converted life and essence
that had been their blood. Its bole, five feet of stalwart diameter,
rose straight and tapering to the first right-angle limbs, each in
itself almost a tree. Its multitude of lance-head leaves swept outward
and upward in countless succession to the feathery crests that stirred
seventy feet overhead--seeming to brush the large, low-hanging stars
that the moon had dimmed.
All was tranquil and idyllic there--until the house door opened and a
line of men filed out, bringing to his shameful end a human creature who
shambled with the wretchedness of broken nerves.
Over the lowest branch, with business-like precision, Sim Squires
pitched a stone on the end of a long cord, and to the cord he fastened
the rope's end. All that was needed now was the weight which the rope
was to lift, and in the blue-ink shadow that mercifully cloaked it and
made it vague they placed the bound figure of their man.