was busy with a murder trial. He was not at their house to-day; it was
they who were awaiting his return from the court-house, in his own rooms
at the jail, after the most elaborate midday dinner Mrs. Raker could
devise. The parlor was less resplendent and far prettier than of yore.
Ruth knew that the change had come about through her own suggestions,
which the docile Amos was always asking. She knew, too, that she had not
looked so young and so dainty for years as she looked in her new brown
cloth gown, with the fur trimming near enough a white throat to enhance
its soft fairness. Yet she sighed. She wished heartily that they had not
come to town. True, they needed the things, and, much to Mother Smith’s
discomfiture, she had insisted on going to a modest hotel near the jail,
instead of to Amos’s hospitality; but it was out of the question not to
spend one day with him. Ruth began to fear it would be a memorable day.
There were his clothes, for instance; why should he make himself so
fine for them, when his every-day suit was better than other people’s
Sunday best? Ruth took an unconscious delight in Amos’s wardrobe. There
was a finish about his care of his person and his fine linen and silk
and his freshly pressed clothes which she likened to his gentle manner
with women and the leisurely, pleasant cadence of his voice, which to
her quite mended any breaks in her admiration made by a reckless and
unprotected grammar. Although she could not bring herself to marry him,
she considered him a man that any girl might be proud to win. Quite the
same, his changing his dress put her in a panic. Which was nonsense,
since she didn’t have any reason to suppose—The cold chills were stepping
up her spine to the base of her brain; _that_ was his step in the hall!
He opened the door. He was fresh and pressed from the tailor, he was
smooth and perfumed from the barber, and his best opal-and-diamond
scarf-pin blazed in a new satin scarf. Certainly his presence was
calculated to alarm a young woman afraid of love-making.
Nor did his words reassure her. He said, “Ruth, I don’t know if you have
noticed that I was worried lately.”
“I thought maybe you were bothered about some business,” lied Ruth, with
the first defensive instinct of woman.
“Yes, that’s it; it’s about a man sentenced to death.”
“Oh!” said Ruth.
“Yes, for killing Johnny Bateman. He’s applied for a new trial, and the
court has just been heard from. Raker’s gone to find out. If he can’t
get the hearing, it’s the gallows; and I—”
“Oh, Amos, no! that would be too awful! Not _you_!”
“—I’d rather resign the office, if it wouldn’t seem like sneaking. Ah!”
A rap at the door made Amos leap to his feet. In the rap, so muffled,
so hesitating, sounded the diffidence of the bearer of bad news. “If
_that’s_ Raker,” groaned Amos, “it’s all up, for that ain’t his style of
knock!”
Raker it was, and his face ran his tidings ahead of him.
“They refused a new trial?” said Amos.
“Yes, they have,” exploded Raker. “Oh, damn sech justice! And he’s only
got three days before the execution. And it’s _here_! Oh, ain’t it h—?”
“Yes, it is,” said Amos, “but you needn’t say so here before ladies.” He
motioned to the portrait and to Ruth, who had leaned out from her chair,
listening with a pale, attentive face.
“Please excuse me, ladies,” said Raker, absently; “I’m kinder off my
base this morning. You see, Amos, my wife she says if hanging Sol is my
duty I’ve jest got to resign, for she won’t live with no hangman. She’s
terrible upset.”
“It ain’t your duty; it’s mine,” said Amos.
“I guess you don’t like the job any more’n me,” stammered Raker, “and it
ain’t like Joe Raker sneakin’ off this way; but what can I do with my
woman? And maybe you, not having any wife—”
“No,” said Amos, very slowly, “I haven’t got any wife; it’s easier for
me.” Nevertheless, the blood had ebbed from his swarthy cheeks.
“But how did it happen?” said Ruth.
“’Ain’t Amos told you?” said Raker, whose burden was visibly lightened—he
pitied Amos sincerely, but it is much less distressful to pity one’s
friends than to need to pity one’s self. “Well, this was the way: Sol
Joscelyn was a rougher in the steel-works across the river, and he has
a sweetheart over here, and he took her to the big Catholic fair, and
Johnny was there. Johnny was the biggest policeman on the force and the
best-natured, and he had a girl of his own, it came out, so there was no
cause for Sol to be jealous. He says now it was his fault, and she says
’twas all hers; but my notion is it was the same old story. Breastpins
in a pig’s nose ain’t in it with a pretty girl without common-sense; and
that’s Scriptur’, Mrs. Raker says. But Sol felt awful bad, and he felt so
bad he went out and took a drink. He took a good many drinks, I guess;
and not being a drinkin’ man he didn’t know how to carry it off, and he
certainly didn’t have any right to go back to the hall in the shape he
was in. It was a friendly part in Johnny to take him off and steer him
to the ferry. But there was a little bad look about it, though Sol went
peaceful at last. Sol says they had got down to Front Street, and it was
all friendly and cleared up, and he was terrible ashamed of himself the
minnit he got out in the air. He was ahead, he says, crossing the street,
when he heard Johnny’s little dog yelp like mad, and he turned round—of
course he wasn’t right nimble, and it was a little while before he found
poor Johnny, all doubled up on the sidewalk, stabbed in the jugular
vein. He never made a sign. Sol got up and ran after the murderer. The
mean part is that two men in a saloon saw Sol just as he got up and ran.
Naturally they ran after him and started the hue-and-cry, and Sol was so
dazed he didn’t explain much. Have I got it straight, Amos?”
“Very straight, Joe. You might put in that the prosecuting attorney,
Frank Woods, is on his first term and after laurels; and that, unluckily,
there have been three murders in this locality inside the year, and by
hook or crook all three of the men got off with nothing but a few years
at Anamosa; and public sentiment, in consequence, is pretty well stirred
up, and not so particular about who it hits as hitting _somebody_; and
that poor Sol had a chump of a lawyer—and you have the state of things.”
“But why are you so sure he wasn’t guilty?” said Ruth. The shocked look
on her face was fading. She was thinking her own thoughts, not Amos’s,
Raker decided.
“Partly on account of the dog,” said Amos. “First thing Sol said when
they took him up was, ‘Johnny’s dog’s hurt too’; and true enough we found
him (for I was round) crawling down the street with a stab in him. Now, I
says, here’s a test right at hand; if the dog was stabbed by this young
feller he’ll tell of it when he sees him, and I fetched him right up to
Sol; but, bless my soul, the dog kinder wagged his tail! And he’s taken
to Sol from the first. Another thing, they never found the knife that did
it; said Sol might have throwed it into the river. Tommy rot!—I mean it
ain’t likely. Sol wasn’t in no condition to throw a knife a block or two!”
“But if not he, who else?” said Ruth.
Amos was at a loss to answer her exactly, and yet in language that he
considered suitable “to a nice young lady”; but he managed to convey to
her an idea of the villanous locality where the unfortunate policeman
met his death; and he told her that from the first, judging by the
character of the blow (“no American man—a decent man too, like Sol—would
have jabbed a man from behind that way; that’s a Dago blow, with a Dago
knife!”), he had suspected a certain Italian woman, who “boarded” in
the house beneath whose evil walls the man was slain. He suspected her
because Johnny had arrested “a great friend of hers” who turned out to be
“wanted,” and in the end was sent to the penitentiary, and the woman had
sworn revenge. “That’s all,” said Amos, “except that when I looked her
up, she had skipped. I have a good man shadowing her, though, and he has
found her.”
“And that was what convinced you?”
“That and the man himself. Suppose we take a look at him. Then I’ll have
to go to Des Moines. I suspected this would come, and I’m all ready.”
So the toilet was for the Governor and not for her; Ruth took shame to
herself for a full minute while Raker was speaking. Amos’s dejection came
from a cause worthy of such a man as he. Perhaps all her fancies....
“That will suit,” Raker was saying. “He has been asking for you. I told
him.”
“Thank you, Joe,” said Amos, gratefully.
“I don’t propose to leave _all_ the dirty jobs to you,” growled Raker.
And he added under his breath to Ruth, when Amos had stopped behind to
strap a bag, “Amos is going to take it hard.”
He led the way, through a stone-flagged hall, where the air wafted
the unrefreshing cleanliness of carbolic acid and lime, up a stone
and iron staircase worn by what hundreds of lagging feet! past grated
windows through which how many feverish eyes had been mocked by the
brilliant western sky! past narrow doors and the laughter and oaths of
rascaldom in the corridor, into an absolutely silent hall blocked by an
iron-barred door. There Raker paused to fit a key in the lock, and on
his commonplace, florid features dawned a curious solemnity. Ruth found
herself breathing more quickly.
The door swung inward. Ruth’s first sensation was a sort of relief, the
room looked so little like a cell, with its bright chintz on the bed and
the mass of nosegays on the table. A black-and-tan terrier bounded off
the bed and gambolled joyously over Amos’s feet.
“Here’s the sheriff and a lady to see you, Sol,” Raker announced.
The prisoner came forward eagerly, holding out his hand. All three shook
it. He was a short, cleanly built man, who held his chin slightly
uplifted as he talked. His reddish-brown hair was strewn over a high
white forehead; its disorder did not tally with the neatness of his
Sunday suit, which, they told Ruth afterwards, he had worn ever since
his conviction, although previously he had been particular to wear
his working-clothes. Ruth’s eyes were drawn by an uncanny attraction,
stronger than her will, to the face of a man in such a tremendous
situation. His skin was fair and freckled, and had the prison pallor,
face and hands. But the feature that impressed Ruth was his eyes. They
were of a clear, grayish-blue tint, meeting the gaze directly, without
self-consciousness or bravado, and innocent as a child’s. Such eyes are
not unfrequent among working-men, but the rest of us have learned to hide
behind the glass. He did not look like a man who knew that he must die
in three days. He was smiling. Looking closer, however, Ruth saw that
his eyelids were red, and she observed that his fingers were tapping the
balls of his thumbs continually.
“I’m real glad to see you,” he said. “Won’t you set down? Poker, you
let the lady alone”—addressing the dog. “He’s just playful; he won’t
bite. Mr. Wickliff lets me have him here; he was Johnny’s dog, and he’s
company to me. He likes it. They let him out whenever he wants, you
know.” His eyes for a second passed the faces before him and lingered on
the bare branches of the maple swaying between his window grating and
the sky. Was he thinking that he would see the trees but once, on one
terrible journey?
Raker blew his nose violently.
“Well, I’m off to Des Moines, Sol,” said Amos.
“Yes, sir. And about Elly going? I don’t want her to go to all that
expense if it won’t do no good. I want to leave her all the money I can—”
“You never mind about the money.” Amos took the words off his tongue with
friendly gruffness. “But she better wait till we see how I git along.
Maybe there’ll be no necessity.”
“It’s a kinder long journey for a young lady,” said Joscelyn, anxiously,
“and it’s so hard getting word of those big folks, and I hate to think of
her having to hang round. Elly’s so timid like, and maybe somebody not
being polite to her—”
“I’ll attend to all that, Joscelyn. She shall go in a Pullman, and
everything will be fixed.”
“Can you git passes? You are doing a terrible lot of things for me, Mr.
Wickliff; and Mr. Raker too, and his good lady” (with a grateful glance
at Raker, who rocked in the rocking-chair and was lapped in gloom). “It
does seem like you folks here are awful kind to folks in trouble, and if
I ever git out—” He was not equal to the rest of the sentence, but Amos
covered his faltering with a brisk—
“That’s all right. Say, ’ain’t you got some new flowers?”
Joscelyn smiled. “Those are from the boys over to the mill. Ten of them
boys was over to see me Sunday, no three knowing the others were coming.
I tell you when a man gits into trouble he finds out about his friends.
I got awful good friends. The roller sent me that box of cigars. And
there’s one little feller—he works on the hot-bed, one of them kids—and
he walked all the six miles, ’cross the bridge and all, ’cause he didn’t
have money for the fare. Why he didn’t have money, he’d spent it all
in boot-jack tobacco and a rosy apple for me. He’s a real nice little
boy. If—if things was to go bad with me, would you kinder have an eye on
Hughey, Mr. Wickliff?”
Amos rose rather hastily. “Well, I guess I got to go now, Sol.”
[Illustration: THE FAREWELL]
Ruth noticed that Sol got the sheriff’s big hand in both his as he said,
“I guess you know how I feel ’bout what you and Mr. Raker—” This time he
could not go on, his mouth twitched, and he brushed the back of his hand
across his eyes. Ruth saw that the palm had a great white welt on it, and
that the sinews were stiffened, preventing the fingers from opening wide.
She spoke then. She held out her own hand.
“I know you didn’t do it,” said she, very deliberately; “and I’m sure we
shall get you free again. Don’t stop hoping! Don’t you stop one minute!”
“I guess I can’t say anything better than that,” said Amos. In this
fashion they got away.
Amos did not part his lips until they were back in his own parlor, where
he spoke. “Did you notice his hand?”
Ruth had noticed it.
“A man who saw the accident that gave him those scars told me about it.
It happened two years ago. Sol had his spell at the roll, and he was
strolling about, and happened to fetch up at the finishing shears, where
a boy was straightening the red-hot iron bars. I don’t know exactly how
it happened; some way the iron caught on a joint of the bed-plates and
jumped at him, red-hot. He didn’t get out of the way quick enough. It
went right through his leg and curved up, and down he dropped with the
iron in him. Near the femoral artery, they said, too; and it would have
burned the walls of the artery down, and he would have bled to death in
a flash. Sol Joscelyn saw him. He looked round for something to take
hold of that iron with that was smoking and charring, but there wasn’t
anything—the boy’s tongs had gone between the rails when he fell. So
he—he took his _hands_ and pulled the red-hot thing out! That’s how both
his hands are scarred.”
“Oh, the poor fellow!” said Ruth; “and think of him _here_!”
Amos shook his head and strode to the window. Then he came back to her,
where she was trying to swallow the pain in the roof of her mouth. He
stretched his great hands in front of him. “How could I ever look at them
again if they pulled that lever?” he sobbed—for the words were a sob; and
immediately he flung himself back to the window again.
“Amos, I know they won’t hang him; why, they _can’t_. If the Governor
could only see him.” Ruth was standing, and her face was flushed. “Why,
Amos, _I_ thought maybe he might be guilty until I saw him! I know the
Governor won’t see him, but if we told him about the poor fellow, if we
tried to make him see him as we do?”
Amos drearily shook his head. “The Governor is a just man, Ruth, but he
is hard as nuts. Sentiment won’t go down with him. Besides, he is a great
friend of Frank Woods, who has got his back up and isn’t going to let me
pull his prisoner out. Of course he’s given _his_ side.”
“The girl—this Elly? If she were to see the Governor?”
“I don’t know whether she’d do harm or not. She’s a nice little thing,
and has stood by Sol like a lady. But it’s a toss up if she wouldn’t
break down and lose her head utterly. She comes to see him as often as
she can, always bringing him some little thing or other; and she sits
and holds his hand and cries—never seems to say three words. Whenever
she runs up against me she makes a bow and says, ‘I’m very much obliged
to you, sir,’ and looks scared to death. _I_ don’t know who to get to go
with her; her mother keeps a working-man’s boarding-house; she’s a good
soul, but—”
He dropped his head on his hand and seemed to try to think.
It was strange to Ruth that she should long to go up to him and touch his
smooth black hair, yet such a crazy fancy did flit through her brain.
When she thought that he was suffering because of her, she had not been
moved; but now that he was so sorely straitened for a man who was
nothing to him more than a human creature, her heart ached to comfort him.
“No,” said Amos; “we’ve got to work the other strings. I’ve got some
pull, and I’ll work that; then the newspaper boys have helped me out, and
folks are getting sorry for Sol; there wouldn’t be any clamor against it,
and we’ve got some evidence. I’m not worth shucks as a talker, but I’ll
take a talker with me. If there was only somebody to keep her straight—”
“Would you trust me?” said Ruth. “If you will, I’ll go with her
to-morrow.”
Amos’s eyes went from his mother’s picture to the woman with the pale
face and the lustrous eyes beneath it. He felt as stirred by love and
reverence and the longing to worship as ever mediæval knight; he wanted
to kneel and kiss the hem of her gown; what he did do was to open his
mouth, gasp once or twice, and finally say, “Ruth, you—you are as good as
they make ’em!”
* * * * *
Amos went, and the instant that he was gone, Ruth, attending to her own
scheme of salvation, crossed the river. She entered the office of the
steel-works, where the officers gave her full information about the
character of Sol Joscelyn. He was a good fellow and a good workman,
always ready to work an extra turn to help a fellow-workman. She went to
his landlady, who was Elly’s mother, and heard of his sober and blameless
life. “And indeed, miss, I know of a certainty he never did git drunk
but once before, and that was after his mother’s funeral; and she was
bedfast for ten years, and he kep’ her like a lady, with a hired girl,
he did; and he come home to the dark house, and he couldn’t bear it, and
went back to the boys, and they, meaning well, but foolish, like boys,
told him to forget the grief.” Ruth went back to Sol’s mill, between
heats, to seek Sol’s young friend. She found the “real nice little boy”
with a huge quid in his cheek, and his fists going before the face of
another small lad who had “told the roller lies.” He cocked a shrewd
and unchildish blue eye at Ruth, and skilfully sent his quid after the
flying tale-bearer. “Sol Joscelyn? Course I know him. He’s a friend
of mine. Give me coffee outer his pail first day I got here; lets me
take his tongs. I’m goin’ to be a rougher too, you bet; I’m a-learnin’.
He’s the daisiest rougher, he is. It’s _grand_ to see him ketch them
white-hot bars that’s jest a-drippin’, and chuck ’em under like they was
kindling-wood. He’s licked my old man, too, for haulin’ me round by the
ear. He ain’t my own father, so I didn’t interfere. Say, you goin’ to see
Sol to-night? You can give him things, can’t you? I got a mince-pie for
him.”
Ruth consented to take the pie, and she did not know whether to laugh
or cry when, examining the crust, she discovered, cunningly stowed away
among the raisins and citron, a tiny file.
When she told Sol, he did not seem surprised. “He’s always a-sending of
them,” said he; “most times Mr. Raker finds ’em, but once he got one
inside a cigar, and I bit my teeth on it. He thinks if he can jest git a
_file_ to me it’s all right. I s’pose he reads sech things in books.”
* * * * *
Amos went to Des Moines of a Monday afternoon; Tuesday night he walked
through the jail gate with his head down, as no one had ever seen the
sheriff walk before. He kept his eye on the sodden, frozen grass and the
ice-varnished bricks of the walk, which glittered under the electric
lights; it was cruelty enough to have to hear that dizzy ring of hammers;
he would not see; but all at once he recoiled and stepped _over_ the
sharp black shadow of a beam. But he had his composure ready for Raker.
“Well!—he wouldn’t listen to you?”
“No; he listened, but I couldn’t move him, nor Dennison couldn’t,
either. He’s honest about it; he thinks Sol is guilty, and an example is
needed. Finally I told him I would resign rather than hang an innocent
man. He said Woods had another man ready.”
“That will be a blow to Sol. I told him you would attend to everything.
He said he’d risk another man if it would make you feel bad—”
“_I_ won’t risk another man, then. But the Governor called my bluff.
Where’s Miss Graves?”
“Gone to Des Moines with Elly. Went next train after your telegram.”
“And Mrs. Smith?”
“She’s in reading the Bible to Sol. I don’t know whether it’s doing
him any good or not; he says ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and ‘That’s right’ to every
question she asks him; but I guess some of it’s politeness. And he seems
kinder flighty, and his mind runs from one thing to another. But he says
he’s still hoping. He’s made a list of all his things to give away; and
he’s said good-bye to the newspaper boys. I never supposed that youngest
one had any feeling, but I had to give him four fingers of whiskey after
he come out; he was white’s the wall, and he hadn’t a word to say. It’s
been a terrible day, Amos. My woman’s jest all broke up; she wanted me
to make a rope-ladder. Me! Said she and old Lady Smith would hide him.
‘Polly,’ says I, ‘I know my duty; and if I didn’t, Amos knows his.’ She
’ain’t spoke to me since, and we had a picked-up dinner. Well, _I_ can’t
eat!”
“You best not drink much either, then, Joe,” said Amos, kindly; and he
went his ways. Dark and painful ways they were that night: but he never
flinched. And the carpenters on the ghastly machine without the gate (the
shadow of which lay, all night through, on Amos’s curtain) said to each
other, “The sheriff looks sick, but he ain’t going to take any chances!”
The day came—Sol’s last day—and there were a hundred demands for Amos’s
decision. In the morning he made his last stroke for the prisoner.
He told Raker about it. “I found the tool at last,” he said, “in the
place you suspected. Dago dagger. I’ve expressed it to Miss Graves and
telegraphed her. It’s in _her_ hands now.”
“Sol says he ’ain’t quit hoping,” says Raker. “Say, the blizzard flag is
out; you don’t think you could put it off for weather, being an outdoor
thing, you know?”
“No,” says Amos, knitting his black brows; “I know my duty.”
Towards night, in one of his many visits to the condemned man, Sol said,
“Elly’ll be sure to come back from Des Moines in—in time, if she don’t
succeed, won’t she?”
“Oh, sure,” said Amos, cheerfully. He spoke in a louder than common voice
when he was with Sol; he fought against an inclination to walk on tiptoe,
as he saw Raker and the watch doing. He wished Sol would not keep hold of
his hand so long each time they shook hands; but he found his hands going
out whenever he entered the room. He had a feeling at his heart as if a
string were tightening about it and cutting into it: shaking hands seemed
to loosen the string. From Sol, Amos went down-stairs to the telephone
to call up the depot. The electricity snapped and roared and buzzed, and
baffled his ears, but he made out that the Des Moines train had come in
two hours late; the morning train was likely to be later, for a storm was
raging and the telegraph lines were down. Elly hadn’t come; she couldn’t
come in time! Amos changed the call to the telegraph office.
Yes, they had a telegram for him. Just received; been ever since noon
getting there. From Des Moines. Read it?
The sheriff gripped the receiver and flung back his shoulders like a
soldier facing the firing-squad. The words penetrated the whir like
bullets: “Des Moines, December 8, 189-. Governor refused audience. Has
left the city. My sympathy and indignation. T. L. Dennison.”