THERE was a short cut by which, using a rough back road across the
hill, and then a dimly-marked bridle path down the bed of the creek, one
could get to Tallman’s ravine in less than an hour on foot. Seth saddled
the black mare, and brought her up on the meadow plateau overlooking the
gulf, panting and white on breast and barrel with foam, inside fifteen
minutes. He had galloped furiously, unable to think save in impatient
flashes, and reckless alike of his own neck and the beast’s wind and
limbs. He reined up the plunging mare at the very edge of the ravine,
where some score of farmers and boys were standing clustered under the
trees, watching his excited approach.
As he threw himself from the saddle among them, and looked swiftly from
face to face for the right one to speak to first, the attention of the
elder bystanders concentrated itself upon the mare. They would have
given their foremost thoughts to her anyway, for they were owners of
livestock even before they were neighbors, and her splashed and heated
condition appealed in protest to their deepest feeling--reverential
care for good horseflesh. But there was something more: the mare was
strangely, visibly agitated at the sight of the glen before her, and
reared back with outstretched trembling forelegs, lifted ears, and
distended, frightened eyes.
“By Cracky!” cried Zeke Tallman himself, “don’t it beat natur’! This
’ere mare knaows what’s happened! Look at her! She senses what’s
layin’ down there at the bottom!”
“’N’ it they say dawgs has got more instinck than a hoss!” said a
younger yokel. He kicked a mongrel pup which was lounging around among
the men’s legs, with a fierce “Git aout! yeh whelp, yeh! What d’_you_
knaow abaout it!” to illustrate his contempt for this canine theory.
A third farmer, more practically considerate, took the shivering,
affrighted beast by the bridle, and led it away from the gulf’s edge,
patting its wet neck compassionately as they went.
Meanwhile Seth had found his way through the group to his brother John,
who stood with his back against a beech tree, springing from the very
brink of the gulf, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the trampled
grass at his feet. A half circle of boys, with one or two girls of the
school age, stretched about him at some distance, like the outer line
of an open fan, mutely eyeing him as the second most important figure in
the tragedy. They separated for Seth to make his way, and made signs to
each other that the interest was doubled by his arrival. The brothers
shook hands silently and scarcely looked at each other.
There came the sound of a pistol shot from the glen below; somebody
said: “There! they’ve killed th’ off-hoss. Ther’ goes th’ best matched
team o’ grays in Dearborn Caounty!”
“Have you been down yet, John?” Seth asked softly, as the low buzz of
conversation began about them once more.
“No, not yet. I suppose I could if I had insisted on it, but when I got
here, twenty minutes or so ago, they told me here that Timms had got his
jury together down there, and forbidden anybody coming down till they
were through. So I’ve stayed here. Not that I care about Timms, but--I
can wait.”
“Let’s go down!” As he spoke, Seth swung himself around the beech,
and began the descent, letting himself swiftly down the steep, mossy
declivity by saplings and roots. His brother followed. One or two
boys started also, but were roughly restrained by their elders, with a
whispered “Stay back, can’t yeh! H’ain’t yeh got no sense. Them’s the
brothers!”
The scene at the bottom was not unlike what Seth’s fancy had painted it,
adding the terrible novelties of the night to a spot he had known from
boyhood. Half-shaded even in the noon sunlight by overhanging branches
from the towering, perpendicular sides of the glen, the miniature valley
lay, a narrow stretch of poor, close-cropped grass, with the spiral,
faded mullein stalks, the soft brown clumps of brake, the straggling,
bloomless thistles, and even some tufts of glowing golden-rod, which
push their way into unfrequented pasture-lands and encompass their
sterility. The stream, which once had been a piscatorial glory of the
section, but now, robbed of its water and its life by distant clearings,
mills and reservoirs, wandered sadly and shallowly on an unnoted course,
divided itself here to skirt each side of the gulf with a contemptible
rivulet--the two coming together abruptly at the mouth of the low stone
culvert, and vanishing into its dark recesses, above which rose, sloping
steeply, the high embankment of the road traversing the ravine.
It was over this embankment that horses, carriage and owner had
precipitately pitched; it was at its base, on the swail and gravel of
the stream’s edge, that the wreck lay, surrounded by a little knot of
men. Vertical gashes in the earth down the bank, with broken branches
and tom roots, marked the awful track of the descent; the waters of the
brook to the right, dammed by the body of the horse killed in the fall,
had overflowed the sands and made muddy rivulets across to the culvert.
The Coroner turned with obvious vexation at the sound of the brothers’
approach. “I thought I give word--” he began; then, recognizing the
newcomers, added, without altering his peremptory, officious tone: “It’s
all right; you can come now, if you want to. The gentlemen of the
jury have completed their labors for the present. I was on the pint of
adjourning the ink-west.”
The brothers joined the jurors, and dumbly surveyed the spectacle at
their feet. One of the grays lay across the rivulet; the other, more
recently dead, was piled awkwardly upon its mate’s neck and shoulders,
in an unnatural heap. The front portions of the buggy, scratched but not
smashed, were curiously reared in the air, by reason of the pole being
driven deep into the soft earth, between the horses; the rear wheels
and the seat, broken off and riven by the violence of the shock, were
imbedded in the marsh underneath. On the higher ground, close in front
of the brothers, lay something decorously covered with horse-blankets,
which they comprehended with a sinking of the heart.
“He lay in theer, part under the hind wheels ’n’ part under the nigh
hoss,” explained the Coroner, with dignity. “The fall was enough to brek
his neck twenty times over, let alone the hosses may’ve kicked him on
the way down. We hev viewed the remains, ’n’ we’ve decided--
“We ain’t decided nothin’!” broke in one of the jurors, a serious,
almost grim-faced farmer, with a bushy collar of gray whiskers framing
his brown square jaw. “How kin we decide till we’ve heerd some evidence,
’n’ before the ink-west is threw with?”
“There’s some men’d kick if they was goin’ to be hung. Did I _say_
we’d arrived at a verdict? What I mean is we’ve agreed to adjourn the
ink-west now till arter the funeral.”
“Well, why daon’t yeh say what yeh mean, then?” rejoined the objecting
juror. “They can’t no cor’ner make up my verdict fur me, ’n’ you’ll
fine it aout, tew.”
“The more fool me fur panelin’ yeh!” was the Coroner’s comment.
The brothers insensibly edged away from this painful altercation. A
little elderly man, in shabby broadcloth which seemed strangely out
of place among the rough tweeds and homespuns of the farmers, detached
himself from the group of jurors, and came over to them, with a subdued
halfsmile of recognition. It was the Thessaly undertaker.
“Tew bad, ain’t it?” he said glibly, “allus some such scrimmage as
thet, on every one of Timms’ juries. He ain’t got no exec’tive ability,
_I_ say. I’d like to see _him_ run a funer’l with eight bearers--all
green han’s! I told him thet once, right to his face! But then of course
yeh knaow _I_ can’t say much. He’s techy, ’n’ ’twouldn’t do fur me
to rile him. We hev a kind o’ ’rangement, you see. I hev to be on hand
any-way, ’n’ he allus puts me on the jury; it helps him ’n’ it helps
me. I kin always sort o’ smooth over things, if any o’ th’ jurors feels
cranky, yeh knaow. They’ll listen to me, cuz they reelize I’ve hed
experience, ’n’ then there’s a good deal in knaowin’ haow to manage
men, in hevin’ what _I_ call exec’tive ability. Of course, this case is
peculiar. They ain’t no question abaout th’ death bein’ accidental. But
this man you heerd kickin’, this Cyrus Ballou, he’s makin’ a dead set to
hev’ Zeke Tallman condemned fur hevin’ his fence up there in bad repair.
He ’n’ Tallman’s a lawin’ of it abaout some o’ his steers thet got
into Tallman’s cabbages, ’n’ thet’s why-----”
“I suppose we can leave this to you!” John broke in, impatience
mastering the solemnity of the scene. “Have you made any arrangements?
You know what ought to be done.”
“Yes, my boy ought to be here by this time with my covered wagon, what I
call my ambulance.”
The brothers turned away from him. The little man remembered something
and hurrying after them laid his hand on John’s arm.
“When I spoke abaout allus bein’ on the jury, you knaow, p’raps I ought
to’ve explained.” He proceeded with an uneasy, deprecating gesture. “You
see, a juror gits a dollar a day, ’n’ sometimes friends of the
remains think I ought to deduck thet f’m my bill, but ef you’ll jest
consider----”
“Oh for God’s sake! leave us alone!”
It was Seth who spoke, and the undertaker joined his fellow-jurors at
the foot of the hill forthwith. The brothers went back, and stood again
in oppressed silence over the blanketed form.
Dr. William Henry Timms meanwhile conversed apart with his panel. He
was a middle-aged, shrewdfaced man, who, like so many thousands of
other Whig babes born in the forties, had been named after the hero
of Tippecanoe. He was more politician than coroner, more coroner than
doctor. He hung by a rather dubious diploma upon the outskirts of his
profession, snubbed by the County Society, contemned by most sensible
Thessaly families as “not fit to doctor a sick cat.” But he had a
powerful “pull” in the politics of the county, and the office could not,
apparently, be wrested from him, no matter how capable his opponent.
In the earlier years of his official service he had been over zealous
in suspecting mysteries, and had twice been reprimanded by the Supreme
Court Judge, and much oftener by the District Attorney, for enveloping
in criminal suspicion cases which, when intelligently examined, were
palpable and blameless casualties. These experiences had sensibly
modified his zeal. He had put the detective habit of mind far away
behind him, and, like a wise official, bent all his energies now to the
more practical labor of dividing each inquest into as many sessions as
possible. Had he been a Federal Deputy Marshal, he could not have been
more skilled in this delicate art of getting eight days’ pay out of
a three hours’ case. A bare suggestion of mystery at the start, to be
almost cleared up, then revived, then exploited carefully, then finally
dissipated, and all so deftly that the District Attorney, who lived at
Octavius, would not be inspired to come over and interfere--this was Dr.
Timms’ conception of a satisfactory inquest. Occasionally there would
be the added zest of an opportunity to formally inflict censure upon
somebody, and if this involved some wealthy or potential person, so much
the better: to withhold the censure meant tangible profit, to sternly
mete it (failing a fair arrangement) meant public credit as a bold,
vigilant official.
Dr. Timms was still turning over in his mind the professional
possibilities involved in Tallman’s bad fence-building, and casually
sounding his jurors as to their private feelings toward the delinquent;
the brothers had followed the jury up to the meadow plateau, and
were standing aloof from yet among their neighbors, answering in
monosyllables, and following mentally the work of the undertakers’
squad down in the bottom; the farmers were beginning to straggle off
reluctantly, the demands of neglected work and long-waiting dinners
conquering their inclination to remain--when a big carry-all from Tyre
drove up on the road outside, and a score of men clambered out and
over the fence to join the group. They had driven post-haste from the
Convention, and among them were Ansdell, Beekman, and Milton Squires.
Mr. Ansdell came straight to the two brothers, giving a hand to each
with a gesture full of tender comprehension. While they talked in low
tones of the tragedy, they were joined by Abe Beekman; upon the normal
eagerness and wistful solemnity of his gaunt face there was engrafted
now a curious suggestion of consuming interest in some masked feature
of the affair. He was so intent upon this, whatever it might be, that
to the sensitive feelings of the other three he seemed to dash into the
subject with wanton brusqueness.
“How air yeh, Fairchild?” he nodded to John, “I want somebody to tell
me this hull thing, while it’s fresh. Who knaows th’ most ’baout it?
Where’s th’ Cor’ner? What’s he done so far?”
Obedient to a word from John, the Coroner dignifiedly came over to
the beech tree, where our little group stood, and listened coldly to a
series of searching questions put by the Jay County magnate. When they
were finished he made lofty answer:
“I ain’t institooted no inquiries yit. That’ll be arranged fur later,
to convenience the family ’n’ the officers of the law. It ain’t
customary, in cases of accident like this, to rush around like a hen
with her head cut off, right at the start. The law takes these things
ca’mly, sir--ca’mly ’n’ quietly.”
“But have you made an examination?--you are a doctor, I think,”
interposed Ansdell. “Have you satisfied yourself when the death
occurred? Have you learned any of the circumstances of it? Were there
any witnesses?”
The Coroner looked at the questioner, then at the brothers, as if
including them in his pained censure, then back again at Ansdell:
“I don’t know ez it’s any o’ _your_ business,” he said. “Who _air_ yeh,
any way?”
Before anyone else could answer, Beekman spoke: “He’s the next
Congressman from this deestrick--nominated by acclamation over at Tyre
to-day--that’s who _he_ is. But never mind that, what I want to knaow
is--air yeh sure he died from an accident? Kin yeh swear to thet ez a
doctor?”
“Toe be sure I kin!” responded the official, in a friendlier tone. “He
was simply mashed out o’ shape by the fall. He come down forty feet, ef
it was an inch, plum under the horses. They jest rolled over each other,
all the way down.--And so this is Mr. Ansdell, I presewm. I’m proud to
make yer acquaintance, sir. Only by the merest accident I wasn’t at the
Convention to-day, sir.”
The undertaker came up now to announce that the first stage of his
labors was completed and that the ambulance wagon was on the road
outside, ready to start for the Fairchild homestead.
“We went up by t’other side, lower daown the gulf,” he explained;
“’twas easier, ’n’ then there was no shock to yer feelin’s. Ef I
might be ’lowed to s’jest, it ’ud look kine o’ respectful to hev all
these friends of the remains walk two by two, behine the wagon, daown
to the haouse. Yeh might let the carry-all come along arterwards, empty,
yeh knaow, ez a sort o’ token of grief.”
The suggestion was passively accepted as the proper thing under the
circumstances, and the little procession began to shape itself on the
road outside. Seth was moving toward the fence with the others, when the
thought of the black mare he had ridden to the scene occurred to him. A
farm-boy was holding the animal a little way off, near some bars opening
from the meadow to the road. Seth saw Milton getting over the rails--he
had been busy on the outskirts of the assemblage gathering accounts from
those earlier on the ground--and said to him: “Won’t you get the mare,
and ride her home, along with the carry-all. I shall walk--with the
rest.”
The cortege had formed just beyond the fateful narrowing of the road,
where it crossed the gulf, and the men who were to follow Albert to the
homestead, including all the late comers from Tyre and a few neighbors,
had looked down the steep declivity, and noted the new breaking away of
earth on the road’s edge, before they passed on to fall in line behind
the black, shrouded vehicle. The procession had moved some rods when
there came sounds of excitement from the rear; at these some of the
walkers turned, then others, and even the driver of the ambulance drew
up his horses and joined the retrospective gaze.
The black mare was balking again, on the road directly over the gulf,
and was crowding back with her haunches tight against the fencing on the
side opposite to that over which her late master had fallen. It was a
moment of cruel tension to every eye, for the fence was visibly yielding
under the animal’s weight, and another tragedy seemed a matter of
seconds. Milton appeared to have lost all sense, and was simply clinging
to the mare’s neck, in dumb affright. Luckily a farmer ran forward at
this juncture, and contrived to lead the beast forward diagonally away
from the spot. Milton sat up in the saddle again, turned the mare away
from the gulf, and galloped off.
“Dummed cur’ous thet!” whispered Beekman to Seth; “does thet mare ack
thet way often?”
“I never knew her to balk before to-day. She acted like that when I
first brought her up to the ravine. It _is_ curious, as you say. But
animal instinct is a strange, unaccountable thing any way.”
“Hm-m!” answered the Boss of Jay County, knitting his brows in thought,
as the procession moved again.