THE OFFER OF PAROLE.
Perhaps the disappointment of my cursory reconnoiter showed itself in my
expression. Curt Dawson, who stood with his arms folded and his loose
length draped against the door-jamb, grinned at my dolorous face.
"Nice place, ain't hit--fer a murder?"
"That's about all," I responded affably enough. I had discovered that I
was gaining nothing by a sullen attitude and I am afraid that I was even
yielding to a cheap desire to impress these desperadoes with my
indifference.
"By the way," I added, "what's the delay about? Why don't you finish up
your job and get to a more comfortable place?"
Again he grinned. "Say, stranger," he questioned, "ain't we treatin' yer
pretty well? Was you ever in any other jail where yer got better
handled? I've done laid myself out ter make yer visit memorable."
"It will be," I assured him, "provided I live long enough to remember
it--and--" I reached out my manacled hand for some of his "natural leaf"
and loaded the cob pipe with which I had been presented, "whenever I
pass through Frankfort in after years, Dawson, I promise to drop into
the penitentiary and pay you a visit."
"No Dawson ain't never put up thar yit," came his quick retort, with a
flash that showed I had touched his raw nerve of fear, but the smile
came back as he added, "as fer me, I venerates the traditions of my
family."
I had never succeeded in trapping this unique man-killer into any
admission which he did not care to make, and I had begun to understand
his ability to take the witness stand and run, unscathed, the gantlet of
cross-examination. Still, I could not refrain now from putting a leading
question.
"How did it occur to you to bring me here? Had the judge arranged in
advance that I should be kidnaped?"
"The who?" he inquired.
"Judge Garvin."
"Aw!" his laugh was hearty and prolonged. "So that's the idee that's
bitin' yer? The jedge thinks I'm in Virginny. In fact, stranger, I am in
Virginny. I just seems ter be here, but I hain't. I brought yer here
because yer'd done been firin' off yer face ter the effect that yer
thought yer saw me shoot at yer from the laurel. I didn't low ter have
yer testifyin' ter no sich false notion. Hit mout injer my rep'tation
fer peace and quiet."
Still he later made me a proposal which I promptly rejected. "I done
been studyin' right smart, an' we ain't doin' no good fer ourselves,
stayin' round here," he ventured. "I done sort figgered that mebby if
hits plum agreeable ter you, we mout take yer down ter the railroad
cars, an' let yer promise to leave the mountings and keep yer face
shet."
"What reason have you to suppose that I'd keep a promise made under
duress?"
"I got two reasons ter spose hit. In the fust place the minnit yer busts
yer contrack an' comes back inter this jurisdiction I gives yer my word
I'm goin' ter kill yer thar same's I would er houn' dawg. In the second
place, I'd have this here--" He fumbled awkwardly in his pocket and
brought out a paper which he handed me to read. It was an affidavit
legally drawn, with blank spaces for my signature, and that of
witnesses. It purported to have been written in an attorney's office in
Virginia and to be duly attested. The document represented me as stating
voluntarily that I had seen Curt Dawson (in Virginia) and had realized
that he was not the man whom I had recognized among our assailants. I
was leaving the mountain country, so I was asked to swear, because,
being an Easterner, I did not find the environment congenial. The
fantastic bit of perjury culminated in this highly colored peroration:
"I feel that, in intimating that the said Curt Dawson made said or any
attempt upon the lives of my party, I have been guilty of an
unpardonable injustice, which I deeply deplore and for which I feel
sincere chagrin." As I read that passage I laughed with an amusement
that was not feigned, and then I tore the paper into fragments which I
scattered among the ashes.
Dawson watched me and shrugged his shoulders.
"We don't hardly like ter kill furriners--" he said. "Them folks down
below misunderstands hit an' raises hell--but I reckon ef they won't
take nuthin' but killin' they kin git kilt."
So they had planned not only to keep me out of court, but to present my
affidavit when it became convenient: an affidavit purporting to have
been made by me across the Virginia line, while I was abjectly fleeing.
Weighborne and maybe his wife as well, whom I had already grossly
insulted, would hear the reading of my Iscariot betrayal. If it were
possible for them to think more contemptuously of me than they already
did, this would be the precise climax to bring about such a result.
Most of that day I spent below stairs. In the afternoon Bud left the
cabin and shortly after returned in great excitement.
"Git that damned feller upstairs quick," he cautioned. "A couple of them
Marcus men is stragglin' round here, an' they mout come in."
Dawson leaped from his chair as though electrified, and his face showed
a passion of anxiety. He sprang toward me and seizing my shoulder
pivoted me, pointing to the stairs.
"Hustle," he shouted as he pushed me toward the door. "Git movin'."
Naturally I did not obey. I scented the possibility of rescue, so I
laughed at him and stolidly stood my ground.
"This place suits me," I said.
With the swiftest demonstration of the art of weapon-drawing I have ever
seen he brought his magazine pistol from its holster and thrust it into
my chest. His chin shot belligerently out and his eyes narrowed into
blazing slits. His profanity came in a wild torrent.
My attitude was still indifference as to whether or not I were killed.
New developments had come fast since I turned from the door of the room
where Weighborne's wife still sat before the fire with my stolen kisses
fresh upon her lips and temples, but there had not been a moment of
forgetfulness. I saw nothing ahead of me worth surrendering for, and now
I felt that parlous as the situation was, it was Dawson rather than I
who was frightened.
"Why don't you shoot?" I asked.
With a foul paroxysm of oaths and obscenity he threw the pistol aside,
and crossing the room caught up the broken broomstick which served in
lieu of a poker. I had never before been beaten. It was not pleasant,
quite aside from the physical pain. And as to that phase of it, one who
has not been bludgeoned with bracelets on his wrists may underestimate
the actual bodily torture of the experience. At all events, I must
confess that even now I sometimes awake from a nightmare in which I am
being thrashed with a broomstick. I tried resistance, but one of them
dragged at my chain while the other belabored me, until in a few moments
I sank down in the wormwood bitterness of humiliation and defeat and was
half-dragged, half-kicked up the stairs, and thrown into my room, where
they gagged me against the possibility of outcry, and tied me so that I
could not move from my mattress or kick upon the floor. Dawson himself
remained with me. They had none too much time. Within a few minutes I
heard the long-drawn halloo of persons without. The voices were friendly
and the response from Bud was equally cordial. The all-pervading
hypocrisy of these mountain hatreds lay over and whitewashed the
attitudes of both parties. As they came they shouted their request for
permission to enter, and the man inside responded with assurances of
welcome. Those who were arriving were coming as spies. Those inside were
bent on deceit.
We heard them calling, still from afar, that they wanted a drink of
liquor, and we heard Bud shout back that his jug was at their command.
Then feet tramped about the lower floor. Curt Dawson stood back in the
shadow of the eaves while this interview lasted with his weapon drawn,
and never once until the visitors rode away from the house did his eyes
leave the door at the head of the stairs.
When Bud came up after they had gone he was a little pale under the
reaction and the strain of anxiety showed in his eyes.
"My God!" he exclaimed. "I 'lowed them fellers never was ergoin' ter
leave hyar."
"What did you tell 'em?" demanded Dawson curtly.
"I told 'em I'd had a little business round hyar--let 'em think it was
somethin' ter do with er still, an' said I'd jest spent the night hyar
ruther then hoof hit back home."
Dawson jerked his head toward the stairway. "Did they say anythin' 'bout
comin' up here?"
"No. They kinder eyed them steps, but they didn't say nothin'."
For a moment Garvin's chief henchman walked the floor, then he snarled
out, "Did they ask anything erbout me?"
"Jim Calloway 'lowed that somebody'd done seed you in this country, an'
I said no, that you was over thar in Virginny."
Again there was a moment's silence after which Dawson's orders came in
quick staccato violence.
"Bud, you've got ter go ter town, so's they'll believe thet story. Don't
come back hyar no more. Them fellers'll ride back before sundown. They
suspicions somethin' an' they'll jest about slip back ter make shore.
I'll take this feller an' lay out in the timber tell night. Here, give
me a lift."
The two of them raised me, still gagged, and carried me down the stairs.
Keeping the house between themselves and the general direction of the
road, they bore me by a path that ran along a cliff to a dense clump of
timber. Then the lesser villain started on with his ambling step,
pausing at the cabin to pick up the jug which was to corroborate his
claim that his business had to do with illicit distilling. He also
stopped indoors to obliterate all traces of human occupancy.
It was perhaps a mark of respect to my belligerency which led Dawson to
leave me gagged, but it was a painful compliment. He propped me up so
that I might have my back against a tree, and from our place of
concealment we could look down unseen on the house. This time my captor
did not favor me with conversation. He sat silent with his visage black
and snarling, and his hand from time to time crept involuntarily toward
his holster. As for myself, I was distinctly uncomfortable. The gag
cramped my jaws and the rope about my ankles was unnecessarily tight.
But during the three hours that I had to sustain this position, events
were transpiring which gave a certain interest to the situation. The men
who had come earlier returned, as Dawson's suspicion had prophesied.
They shouted as before and when they received no answer they approached
with a caution that carried me back to childhood stories of Indian
attacks on block houses. Finally they entered the place, and Dawson sat
there looking on, his hands wrapped about his knees and his shoulders
shaking with silent laughter, as he surveyed their elaborate caution.
They remained in the house for more than an hour and then reconnoitered
the premises, at one time passing very near our place of hiding. Once
more my custodian's lean hand caressed the grip of his pistol, and his
thumb slipped down the safety catch. But in the end they rode away and I
sorrowfully recognized their conviction that they had been running down
a false clue.
It was cold and quite dark when Dawson removed the ropes from my feet
and ordered me to walk back to the house.
That night I slept the sleep of exhaustion, and it was not until my
breakfast arrived the next morning that I awoke.
My captor should have left me in my loft that day and should himself
have remained below where he could watch for possible intrusion. But he
was overcome with a desire to talk and this impulse led to a strategic
error. He wanted to point out (now that he felt certain that I could not
be present when Marcus called his witnesses) how near I had been all
along to the town. He described to me in elaborate detail how, were I at
that moment free, I could walk in twenty-five or thirty minutes to the
court-house door and proceeded to give me satirical and exact
directions. He felt that he had achieved a Machiavellian victory, and it
pleased him to watch me squirm with a sense of frustrated possibilities.
He even explained that while the clan was gathering he, himself, must
remain away, not only because he was taxed with guarding me, but also
because he was, as he facetiously insisted, "in Virginny and too fur
away to git home."
"An' it's a damn shame, too," he confided, "because hit shore looks like
there might be fun in town to-day. All them Marcus people is gatherin'
there an' most of us fellers'll be on hand. Ef somebody gits filled up
with licker thar's mighty ap' ter be a frolic. Thet co'te room hain't
agoin' ter be no healthy place nohow." I shuddered. I was thinking that
the woman who had come on horseback across the hills to join her
husband, would probably be with him in that court-room--if he, himself,
were now able to ride.
After awhile Dawson took me up stairs, and just before he closed the
door, I pleaded that my handcuffs be removed, since one wrist was badly
galled and lacerated. For a time he steadfastly refused, but in the end
agreed to loosen the bracelet from the injured hand, and leave it
dangling to the other. All morning I had been complaining of illness,
and had seemed hardly able to move about. Indeed, my bruises were so
apparent that I was no longer a formidable antagonist. My listlessness,
in part at least, deceived him, and after the anxiety of yesterday, when
his enemies were so close on his trail, he found himself in a state of
reaction and buoyant over-confidence. He produced the key and fitted it
into the lock of the fetter, but before he turned it he paused with a
wink of self-satisfaction to say, "Jest a moment, stranger, I'll make
sure of you fust."
The handcuffs were of that type which tightens with pressure as the lock
tumbler slides over a series of notches. With such an arrangement the
wrist can be squeezed and pinched in a refinement of torture that is
disabling. Dawson now clasped his fist around the bracelet which he
meant to leave locked.
"Now ef you tries to make a false move," he volunteered, "I'm goin' ter
squeeze this, an' ef I has ter squeeze hit I ain't ergoin' ter loosen
hit no mo'." I knew him rather well by this time and had no reason to
doubt his truthfulness of intention, so I merely nodded my enforced
acquiescence. I was bracing every nerve and muscle for the possible
opportunity of the next moment, and at the same time was attempting to
appear totally innocent of any threatening intent.
When, with his one free hand the mountaineer attempted to turn the key,
something about the lock stuck, and after a mumbled oath of impatience,
he bent over and took both hands to the task. That was his one
incautious moment, but I stood docile while he removed the manacle, and
then as he straightened up, loosely holding the chain, I sprang back,
wrenching it from his grasp.
He was instantly after me, but I had put enough space between us to
swing the metal weight over my head.
He saw that this time it was a fight to the death and instead of
crowding in upon my blows retreated one step and thrust his hand under
his armpit to the holster. But it was all too momentary even for his
artistic draw. With the chain wrapped about my right hand and the left
bracelet swinging free I lashed viciously out for his face--and landed.
He dropped like a felled tree and as he collapsed the pistol, half-freed
from its case, rattled on the floor.