RUTLEDGE TALKS
The mountain men whirled. Roaring Lafe ceased his advance to look over a
burly shoulder. In the doorway of the cabin stood the quiet, gray man,
the revenue agent. Beside and behind him were armed men; rifle barrels
bristled in all of the shack’s windows. The moonshiners were surrounded,
outnumbered, helpless. With one accord they dropped their guns and
raised resigned hands above their heads, all but Roaring Lafe.
Bellowing, he sprang toward the door, the window, only to turn back from
ready gun muzzles. Then his bearded face horribly contorted, his
foam-flecked lips twitched back from long, yellow teeth, and he sprang
full at Somers’ throat.
“I’ll tote yuh to death along of me, anyhow,” he said. “You spyin’
sneak!”
The revenue agent cried out, and I sprang forward. But in that crowded
room none dared shoot, for the mountaineers milled already, crouching
for a dash. I hovered over the whirling bulk of the raging moonshiner,
seeking to fire without endangering Somers’ lank, convulsively thrashing
limbs.
It was over in an instant. The slender physician, overwhelmed, fell
sprawling, apparently helpless, his left hand feeling along the other’s
huge arm. A mere touch, it seemed, upon that mass of muscle, a strangled
roar, and Rutledge’s right arm dropped helplessly.
Somers twisted in his grip and freed a hand still holding the heavy
pistol, which Anne Christie had given him. I gasped.
But he did not fire. Instead, the pistol’s lying barrel tapped his huge
adversary neatly across the base of the skull, and Roaring Lafe Rutledge
relaxed. His great arms all abroad, he settled slowly upon his back,
inert as a pole-axed steer.
The physician rose, feeling gingerly of his throat. “It’s all in knowing
where to hit ’em,” he said hoarsely.
The captured mountaineers eyed him admiringly. “Well, dog my cats!”
exclaimed the man called Hank. “Fust time ever I seed anybody best
Roarin’ Lafe! I wouldn’t ’a’ believed it.”
“Come, men,” ordered the government agent briskly. “Round these fellows
up and search ’em. You, Bailey, Gaines, and Lipkowitz, stick around.
We’ve made a clean sweep, I think; but pick up anybody else who comes in
here, and in the morning destroy that still. You know where it is,
Gaines, and now come along down. You can ride the horses tied outside
there. Somers, you and your friends had better come with us.”
The revenue men moved swiftly. Soon a little heap of pistols and knives
lay on the floor beside the guns dropped by their prisoners.
“Take charge of these weapons, Bailey,” ordered the chief again. “You
others, rope these chaps and come along.”
It was done forthwith, and we all set out, the gray-haired man in front,
carrying an electric belt lamp, behind him the seven prisoners in single
file, the right wrist of each handcuffed. Each empty cuff was knotted to
a long rope at four-foot intervals, so that they made a long line,
fastened securely together. Revenue officers with ready rifles marched
on either side, while Somers, Peter, and I dragged wearily behind.
I soon saw why the prisoners were fastened thus oddly, for we plunged
straight down the mountainside, on foot, in a long line. The slope was
so steep that we all had to clutch at the close-growing trees, climbing
as if down a steep ladder. The prisoners made heavy weather of it; their
shackled arms were hampered, and the rope, which bound them together,
was continually catching and retarding them. But, with both hands
secured, they could never have negotiated that dizzying slant; and,
unless all had been fastened together, one or more would surely have
been able to make an escape on that dark, wooded mountainside which they
knew so well.
As it was, after what seemed an age of sliding and scrambling down
grades, which just missed being perpendicular, we reached a little
clearing on comparatively level ground, all breathless and scratched,
our clothes half torn off. We had come ten miles, I suppose. Already
dawn was gray in the east, and I, for one, was exhausted. I hailed the
motor cars which awaited us with a prayer of silent thanksgiving.
My comrades seemed almost as tired as I, and the gray-haired revenue
agent turned a drawn, haggard face to the early light.
“We’re well out of that!” he said. “A couple more hours up there might
have seen an attempt at rescue. Roaring Lafe has plenty of friends on
the mountain.”
Rutledge had preserved a somber silence ever since he returned to
consciousness. He stood with bent head, his magnificent physique
apparently unwearied by our forced march. Now and again he turned a
queer, almost admiring look upon Somers.
He did not reply to the government man’s remark, but the fellow called
Cal Col laughed jeeringly.
“Yah!” he said. “Lafe Rutledge hain’t got no friends in th’ mountains
_now_, no more’n he has kinfolks! They’s plenty will be glad that he’s
done cotched--roarin’ an bullyin’ round like he done!” His snaky eyes
were filled with malevolence.
“Shut up!” ordered one of his guards and slapped him across the sneering
mouth. I think we were all disgusted by his haste to vilify his fallen
leader.
“Yessir, cap’n, I kin tell you-all lots o’ things. I’d have turned up
all this moonshinin’ an’ blockadin’ meanness long ago, on’y I done bin
a-scaret o’ Lafe Rutledge.” He fawned upon the government man, crooked
teeth showing in a repulsive, insinuating smile.
Rutledge smiled bitterly, but did not speak. I wondered what his
thoughts might be; if he regretted now that he had once tried to force
his stepdaughter into a marriage with this--this reptile?
At the end of a rough wagon track stood three motor cars, a couple of
flivvers and a light express truck, covered with wire gratings at either
end. Into this the officers urged their prisoners, still bound together,
and padlocked the grated door behind them. The truck made a tolerable
substitute for a Black Maria, even if its passengers had to seat
themselves upon the floor. An armed man took his place beside its driver
and faced backward to watch the prisoners.
“Drive on, Brownell,” ordered the gray man. “And, remember, you in
there, we’re coming right behind, with half a dozen rifles trained on
that truck every minute!”
We three piled into one of the flivvers, and the rest of the government
men followed, filling every seat, clinging precariously to the running
boards.
That was a wild drive down the mountainside, though we went slowly
enough, perforce. But there was no more than a track, rough and uneven,
winding among stumps and fallen trees; huge roots and boulders lay
athwart it, so that we were shaken like corn in a popper, and I wondered
how these cars had ever been made to climb so high, when the going down
seemed about to wreck them at every turn. The mountaineers, huddled on
the floor of that truck, must have suffered cruelly, with no seats to
which they might cling; but no murmur escaped them. Only Cal Col kept up
a constant wail, until the man nearest him struck him heavily across the
mouth, silencing him effectually.
At last we were down, without having broken either a spring or any of
our bones, and by seven o’clock our odd procession pulled up before the
Asheville city prison. The government agent clambered stiffly out. “I’ll
make a deal with the chief of police to take care of these birds until
we can bring them before the commissioner,” said he. “Doctor Somers, I’m
greatly obliged to you and your friends. It was risky, of course, to use
you men as decoys, but, thanks to you, we caught the whole gang
together. You brought in their sentinels for us, and we had a clear
field. You might have been killed, of course, but it came out very well.
Can I do anything in return?”
Somers nodded. “Why, yes. You can turn that man Rutledge over to me, as
a regularly appointed deputy sheriff of Carabas County. He’s wanted over
there. I’ll get a warrant first and serve it. You’ll keep him safe until
then?”
The other bowed a grim head. “Oh, yes, and for the next twenty years, at
least!”
While we talked, the prisoners were being unloaded, to the curious
delight of a rapidly gathering crowd. Old Rutledge descended
ponderously, his eyes upon Somers. Meeting that odd, almost friendly
regard, the lanky doctor started.
“Here, man,” he said excitedly. “You can do this: Give me a chance for a
quiet talk with Rutledge now. Maybe I can get something out of him.”
The revenue agent agreed readily, and in ten minutes we faced the huge
mountaineer in the little office of the jail. A stalwart officer stood
on either side of him, pistol in hand; for Roaring Lafe was too
notorious to be guarded carelessly.
Doctor Somers leaned toward him impulsively. “Look here, Rutledge!
There’s a friend of mine in jail, over there in Pinelands, waiting his
trial. He was married the other day, and his bride is waiting for him,
crying her eyes out. You’re an old man; won’t you help them?”
The moonshiner looked back at him squarely, his bright old eyes
curiously wistful and soft. “I hain’t havin’ no truck ’ith furriners,”
he answered slowly, “but I’ll do whut I kin for _you_, stranger. Yore
th’ fust one ever bested Roaring Lafe yit; I cain’t tell now how yuh
done hit. Whut kin I do?”
“Confess!” said Somers swiftly. “You might as well; we’ve got you
anyway. Confess, and let poor old Parker out now, instead of keeping him
until you’re tried.”
Rutledge laughed hoarsely. “Confess? W’y, stranger, hain’t no need o’ me
confessing hardly. They done cotched me, still an’ all!”
“Yes, for blockading, I know, but not for murder.”
“Murder? What-all ye talkin’ ’bout, stranger? I ain’t done no killin’
meanness--not in Carabas County.”
“I’m talking about the murder of Doctor Gaskell,” said Somers
impatiently. “Don’t try to pretend you don’t know that! We can prove it
on you, only it’ll take longer.”
Roaring Lafe stared at us. “But I hain’t done no killin’ in Pinelands,”
he repeated. “I’m a-tellin’ ye th’ truth, stranger,” he declared, not
without a certain rude dignity. “Don’t ye go fer t’ call Lafe Rutledge a
liar, suh!”
And then, seeing our puzzlement, he leaned forward confidentially. “I’ll
tell ye,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll tell you-all th’ whole thing. I did
aim for t’ kill Gaskell, account o’ this here.” His wide gesture
indicated his guards, his handcuffs, the jail. “He done found out more’n
he’d oughter, an’ I sont word Satterfield was t’ fix ’im, lessen he sh’d
do whut he done. An’ ’en I come down t’ Pinelands my own se’f. We’d had
dealin’s oncet, Gaskell an’ me, an’ I didn’t aim t’ do no meanness
lessen I jist hadda. I went to ’is house, an’ I done sont ’im word to
tell I aimed t’ settle ’ith him come sunup. An’ I went to his house that
night, aimin’ for to waylay ’im, come mornin’, like I said. Satterfield
was there, an’ I sont ’im back, aimin’ t’ do th’ job my own self. Well,
after while--long mebbe a hour afore sunup--out come Gaskell ’ith ’is
doctor bag an’ sot out th’oo th’ pines acrost th’ big road. I follered
after ’im, ’ith my pistol gun ready. He traveled ’long th’oo them pines
an’ into th’ bresh, an’ me after ’im, ontwel I--I seen th’ ha’nt. An’
’en I lit out a-runnin’. Yessuh!”
He stopped, curiously shamefaced, and stared at Somers, with a sort of
sulky defiance.
“You--you saw a haunt--a ghost?”
“Uh-huh!” The tough-souled old reprobate nodded violently, so that his
patriarchal beard wagged again. “Yassuh! I seen th’ ha’nt, all white,
like in a shroud, an’ blue smoke like brimstone ’round about, an’ eyes
a-flamin’ dreadful--an’ I shore did light a shuck outa there. Gentlemen,
hush! I don’t aim t’ have no truck ’ith ghosteses.”
His big, bold face was all twisted with superstitious awe; the hand
which clutched his beard was trembling. There could be no doubt that he
spoke the truth. Whatever loose newspaper or waving sheet had wrought
upon his ignorant fancy, he was fully convinced that he had encountered
a spirit, and had been driven by it from his intended crime.
“And you didn’t shoot Gaskell? Did you see anybody else there? Was
Satterfield gone?”
“Nossuh--yassuh. I aimed fer to shoot ’im, but I plumb didn’t! I jist
tuck my foot in my hand an’ lit a-runnin’. Ner I didn’t see nobody,
neither. I didn’t look round, lessen th’ ha’nt was a-follerin’ of me;
but Satterfield, he’d done gone back up th’ hill long afore that.”
Somers groaned aloud. I could have wept. Weary as I was, I had been
buoyed up by hope until now. I had borne with all this strain and
fatigue, exulting within myself that now, at last, Lewis would be freed.
This blow was too much. The room whirled before me; Somers’ face
blurred, grew monstrously big, then receded from my sight. I heard his
voice faintly:
“Well, then, in Heaven’s name, who _did_ kill Gaskell?”
Rutledge’s reply sounded fainter yet, a hoarse whisper, trembling with
superstitious dread. “I reckon hit musta been th’ ha’nt!”
“The ghost!” Somers’ voice was reflective, almost convinced. “I believe
you’re right, Rutledge; it must have been the ghost!”
The words seemed to come from an immense distance; they rang in my ears
like a knell. “Poor Somers!” I thought. “He’s gone crazy; he’s off his
head about this thing, just like the rest of us!”
Then I lost consciousness.