been gone longer than we said, it must be after eleven o'clock."
"There!" cried Custer again, as a feeble call for help floated up to
them. "It's from down on the crick bank back of the slaughter-house!"
Mr. Shrimplin was knowing a terrible moment of doubt, especially
terrible because the doubt was of himself. He was aware that Custer
would expect much of him in the present crisis, and he was equally
certain that he would not rise to the occasion. If somebody would only
come that way! And he listened desperately for the sound of wheels on
the road, but all he heard was that oft-repeated call for help that came
wailing from the black shadows beyond the slaughter-house. Suddenly
Custer answered the call with a reassuring cry.
"Perhaps it's another murder!" he said.
"Oh, my God!" gasped Shrimplin, and there flashed through his mind the
horror of that other night.
Custer slipped out of the cart.
"Come on!" he cried.
He was vaguely conscious that his father was not seizing the present
opportunity to distinguish himself with any noticeable avidity. He had
expected to see that conqueror of bad men and cow-towns, the somewhat
ruthless but always manful slayer of one-eye Murphy, descend from his
cart with astonishing alacrity, and heedless in his tried courage stride
down into the darkness beyond the slaughter-house. But Mr. Shrimplin did
nothing of the sort, he made no move to quit his seat. Surely something
had gone very wrong with the William Shrimplin of Custer's fancy, the
young Bill Shrimplin of Texarcana and similar centers of crime and
hardihood.
"Custer--" began Mr. Shrimplin, in a shaking voice. "I am wondering if
it wouldn't be best to drive on into town and get a cop--Oh, my God, why
don't you quit hollering!"
"Maybe they're killing him now!" cried Custer breathlessly.
He could not yet comprehend his father's attitude in the matter, he
could only realize that for some wholly inexplicable reason he was
falling far short of his ideal of him; he seemed utterly to have lost
his eye for the spectacular possibilities of the moment. Why share the
credit with a cop, why ask help of any one!
"You don't need no help, pa!" he said.
"Well, I don't know as I do," replied the little man, but he made no
move to leave his cart, his fears glued him to the seat.
"Come on, then!" insisted Custer impatiently.
"Don't you feel afraid, son?" inquired Mr. Shrimplin, with marked
solicitude.
"Not with you!"
"Well, I don't know as you need to!" admitted Shrimplin. "But I don't
feel quite right--I reckon I feel sort of sick, Custer--sort of--"
"Oh, come on--hurry up!"
"I don't know but I ought to see a doctor first--" faltered Mr.
Shrimplin in a hollow tone.
Misery of soul twisted his weak face pathetically.
"Why you act like you was _afraid!_" said Custer, with withering
contempt.
His words cut the elder Shrimplin like a knife; but they did not move
him from his seat in the cart.
"You bet I ain't afraid, Custer,--and that's no way for you to speak to
your pa, anyhow!"
But what he had intended should be the note of authority was no more
than a whine of injury.
"Then why don't you come if you ain't afraid?" insisted the boy angrily.
"I don't know as I rightly know _why_ I don't!" faltered Mr. Shrimplin.
"I feel rotten bad all at once."
"You're a coward!" cried the boy in fierce scorn.
Sobs choked his further utterance while the hot tears blinded him on the
instant. His idol had turned to clay in his very presence, and in the
desolation of that moment he wished that he might be stricken with
death, since life held nothing for him longer.
"Custer--" began Shrimplin.
"Why don't you be a man and go down there?" sobbed the boy.
"It's dangerous!" said Mr. Shrimplin.
"Then I'll go!" declared Custer resolutely.
"What--and leave me here alone?" cried the little lamplighter.
For answer Custer ran to the fence; his tears still blinded him and sobs
wrenched his little body. Twice he slipped back as he essayed to climb,
but a third attempt took him to the topmost rail of the rickety
structure.
"Custer!" called his father.
But Custer persisted in the crime of disobedience. He slid down from the
top rail and stood among the young pokeberry bushes and ragweed that
luxuriated in the foulness of the slaughter-house yard. It was not an
especially inviting spot even in broad day, as he knew. Now the
moonlight showed him bleached animal bones and grinning animal skulls,
while the damp weeds that clung about his bare legs suggested snakes.
"_Custer!_" cried Mr. Shrimplin again.
But it gained him no response from the boy, who disappeared from before
his eyes without a single backward glance; whereat the little
lamplighter cursed querulously in the fear-haunted solitude of the road.
Custer descended the steep bank that sloped down to the water's edge.
His eyes were fixed on a dense growth of willows and sycamores that
lined the shore; it was from a spot within their black shadows that the
cries for help seemed to come. Presently he paused.
"Hullo!" he called, peering into the darkness ahead of him.
He listened intently, but this time his cry was unanswered; all he heard
was the grunting of some pigs that fed among the offal. The boy shivered
and his heart seemed to stop beating.
"Hullo!" he called once more.
"Help!" came the answer.
And Custer stumbled forward. As he neared the black shadows of the
willows he could feel his heart sink like lead through all the reaches
of his shaking anatomy. He had passed quite beyond the hearing of his
father's commands and reproaches, and the wash and rush of the river
came up to him out of the silence.
"Hullo!" cried the boy, pausing irresolutely.
Then seemingly from the earth at his very feet came a faint answer to
his call, and Custer, forcing his way through a rank growth of weeds and
briers, stood on the brink of a deep gully that a small brook had worn
for itself on its way to the river below. In the bed of this brook was a
dark object that Custer could barely distinguish to be the figure of a
man. A bruised and bleeding face was upturned.
"Give me your hand--" gasped the man.
Custer knelt on the bank and grasping a tuft of grass to steady himself
extended his free hand.
"Are you hurt bad?" he asked.
"I don't know--" gasped the man, as he endeavored to draw himself up out
of the bed of the brook.
But after a moment of fruitless exertion he sank back groaning.
"Go for help!" he said, in a painful whisper. "You are not strong enough
for this."
"How did you get here?" asked Custer.
"I fell off the railroad bridge, the current landed me here; where am I,
anyhow?"
"At the brick slaughter-house," said Custer.
"I thought so; can't you get some one to help you?"
But Custer, his reasonable curiosity satisfied, was already on his way
back to the road. "If only pa has not driven off!" But the senior
Shrimplin had not moved from the spot where Custer had left him five
minutes before.
"Is that you, son?" he asked, as Custer appeared at the fence.
"Come here, quick!" commanded the boy.
"For what?" inquired Mr. Shrimplin.
"You needn't be afraid, it's only a man who's fallen off the iron
bridge. He's down in the bed of the slaughter-house run. I can't get him
out alone!"
"I'll bet he's good and drunk!" said the little lamplighter.
"No, he ain't, and he's mighty badly hurt!" said the boy hotly.
"Of course, of course, Custer!" said Mr. Shrimplin. "He'd a been killed
though if he hadn't been drunk."
He climbed out of his cart, and clambered over the fence. Something in
Custer's manner warned him that any allusions of a jocular nature would
prove highly distasteful to his son, and he followed silently as Custer
led the way down to the brook.
"Here's where he is!" said the boy halting. "You get down beside
him--you're strongest, and I'll stay here and help pull him up while you
lift!"
"That's the idea, son!" agreed Mr. Shrimplin genially.
And he slid down into the bed of the brook where he struggled to get the
injured man to his feet. The first and immediate result of his effort
was that the latter swore fiercely at him, though in a whisper.
"We got to get you out of this, mister!" said the little lamplighter
apologetically.
A second attempt was made in which they were aided by Custer from above,
and this time the injured man was drawn to the top of the bank, where
he collapsed in a heap.
"He's fainted!" said Custer. "Strike a match and see who it is!"
Mr. Shrimplin obeyed, bringing the light close to the bloody and
disfigured face.
"Why, it's Marsh Langham!" he cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FAITH IS RESTORED
"Custer--" began Mr. Shrimplin, and paused to clear his throat. He was
walking beside wild Bill's head while Custer in the cart tried to
support Langham, for the latter had not regained consciousness. "Custer,
I'm mighty well satisfied with you; I may say that while I always been
proud of you, I am prouder this moment than I ever hoped to be! How many
boys in Mount Hope, do you think, would have the nerve to do what you
just done? I love nerve," concluded Mr. Shrimplin with generous
enthusiasm.
But Custer was silent, a sense of bitter shame kept him mute.
"Custer," said his father, in a timidly propitiatory tone, "I hope you
ain't feeling stuck-up about this!"
"I wish it had never happened!" The boy spoke in an angry whisper.
"You wish what had never happened, Custer?"
"About you--I mean!"
Shrimplin gave a hollow little laugh.
"Well, and what about me, son--if I may be allowed to ask?"
"I wish you'd gone down to the crick bank like I wanted you to!"
rejoined the boy.
Again he felt the hot tears gather, and drew the back of his hand across
his eyes. The little lamplighter had been wishing this, too; indeed, it
would for ever remain one of the griefs of his life that he had not done
so. He wondered miserably if the old faith would ever renew itself. His
portion in life was the deadly commonplace, but Custer's belief had
given him hours of high fellowship with heroes and warriors; it had also
ministered to the bloody-mindedness which lay somewhere back of that
quaking fear constitutional with him, and which he could no more control
than he could control his hunger or thirst. His blinking eyelids loosed
a solitary drop of moisture that slid out to the tip of his hooked nose.
But though Mr. Shrimplin's physical equipment was of the slightest for
the rôle in life he would have essayed, nature, which gives the hunted
bird and beast feather and fur to blend with the russets and browns of
the forest and plain, had not dealt ungenerously with him, since he
could believe that a lie long persisted in gathered to itself the very
soul and substance of truth. Another hollow little laugh escaped him.
"Lord, Custer, I was foolin'--I am always foolin'! It was my chance to
see the stuff that's in you. Well, it's pretty good stuff!" he added
artfully.
But Custer was not ready for the reception of this new idea; his
father's display of cowardice had seemed only too real to him. Yet the
little lamplighter's manner took on confidence as he prepared to
establish a few facts as a working basis for their subsequent
reconciliation.
"I'd been a little better pleased, son, if you'd gone quicker when you
heard them calls Mr. Langham was letting out; you did hang back, you'll
remember--it looked like you was depending on me too much; but I got no
desire to rub this in. What you done was nervy, and what I might have
looked for with the bringing-up I've given you. I shan't mention that
you hung back." He shot a glance out of the corners of his bleached blue
eyes in Custer's direction. "How many minutes do you suppose you was in
getting out of the cart and over the fence? Not more than five, I'd say,
and all that time I was sitting there shaking with laughter--just
shaking with inward laughter; I asked you not to leave me alone! Well, I
always was a joker but I consider that my best joke!"
Custer maintained a stony silence, yet he would have given anything
could he have accepted those pleasant fictions his father was seeking to
establish in the very habiliments of truth.
"I hoped you'd know how to take a joke, son!" said the little
lamplighter in a hurt tone.
"Were you joking, sure enough?" asked Custer doubtingly.
"Is it likely I could have been in earnest?" demanded Shrimplin,
hitching up his chin with an air of disdain. "What's my record right
here in Mount Hope? Was it Andy Gilmore or Colonel Harbison that found
old man McBride when he was murdered in his store?" And the little
lamplighter's tone grew more and more indignant as he proceeded. "Maybe
you think it was your disgustin' and dirty Uncle Joe? _I_ seem to
remember it was Bill Shrimplin, or do I just dream I was there--but I
ain't been called a liar, not by no living man--" and he twirled an end
of his drooping flaxen mustache between thumb and forefinger. "Facts is
facts," he finished.
"Everybody knows you found old Mr. McBride--" said Custer rather
eagerly.
"I'm expecting to hear it hinted I didn't!" replied Mr. Shrimplin
darkly. "I'm expecting to hear it stated by some natural-born liar that
I set in my cart and bellered for help!"
"But you didn't, and nobody says you did," insisted the boy.
"Well, I'm glad you don't have to take my word for it," said Shrimplin.
"I'm glad them facts is a matter of official record up to the
court-house. I don't know, though, that I care so blame much about being
held up as a public character; if I hadn't a reputation out of the
common, maybe I wouldn't be misjudged when I stand back to give some one
else a chance!"
He laughed with large scorn of the world's littleness.
The epic of William Shrimplin was taking to itself its old high noble
strain, and Custer was aware of a sneaking sense of shame that he could
have doubted even for an instant; then swiftly the happy consciousness
stole in on him that he had been weighed in the balance by this
specialist in human courage and had not been found wanting. And his
heart waxed large in his thin little body.
They were jogging along Mount Hope's deserted streets when Marshall
Langham roused from his stupor.
"Where are you taking me?" he demanded of the boy.
"Home, Mr. Langham--we're almost there now," responded Custer.
"Take me to my father's," said Marshall with an effort, and his head
fell over on Custer's small shoulder.
He did not speak again until Bill came to a stand before Judge Langham's
gate.
"Are we there?" he asked of the boy.
"Yes--"
"Don't you think we'd better get help?" said Shrimplin.
And Marshall seeming to acquiesce in this, the little lamplighter
entered the yard and going to the front door rang the bell. A minute
passed, and growing impatient he rang again. There succeeded another
interval of waiting in which Shrimplin cocked his head on one side to
catch the sound of possible footsteps in the hall.
"He says try the knob," called Custer from the cart.
Doing this, Shrimplin felt the door yield, it was not locked; at the
same instant he made this discovery, however, he heard a footfall in the
street and so, hurried back to the gate. The new-comer halted when he
was abreast of wild Bill, and stared first at the cart and then at
Shrimplin.
"Is anything the matter?" he asked.
It was Watt Harbison.
"Young Mr. Langham has fell off the high iron bridge," said the little
lamplighter, with a dignity that more than covered his lapse from
grammar.
"Why--are you badly hurt, Marsh?" cried Watt going close to the cart.
"I don't know, I'm in most infernal pain," said Langham slowly.
"Do you think we can lift him?" asked Shrimplin. "The judge don't seem
to be at home."
"Your boy would better go to my uncle's; Judge Langham may be there,"
said Watt.
And Custer promptly slid out of the cart and sped off up the street.
Langham met the delay with grim patience. A strange indifference had
taken the place of fear, nothing seemed of much moment any more.
Presently in his stupor he heard the sound of quick steps, then Colonel
Harbison's voice, and a moment later he was aware that the three men had
lifted him from the cart and were carrying him along the path toward
the house. They entered the hall.
"Take me up-stairs," he said, and without pause his bearers moved
forward.
They saw now that his face was pinched and ghastly under the smear of
blood that was oozing from an ugly cut on his cheek, and Watt and the
colonel exchanged significant glances. When they reached the head of the
stairs Custer pushed open the first door; the room thus disclosed was in
darkness, and the colonel, with a whispered caution to his companions,
released his hold on Langham, and striking a match, stepped into the
room where, having found the chandelier, he turned on the gas. As the
light flared up, Shrimplin and Watt advanced with their helpless burden.
It was the judge's chamber they had entered and it was not untenanted,
for there on the bed lay the judge himself.
It was Langham who first saw that recumbent figure. A hoarse
inarticulate groan escaped him. He twisted clear of the hands that
supported him and by a superhuman effort staggered to his feet, he even
took an uncertain step in the direction of the bed, his starting eyes
fixed on the spare figure. Then his strength deserted him and with a cry
that rose to a shriek, he pitched forward on his face.
The colonel strode past the fallen man to the bedside, where for an
instant he stood looking down on a placid face and into open eyes. As
his glance wandered he saw that the judge's nerveless fingers still
grasped the butt of a revolver.
White-faced he turned away. "Is he dead, Colonel?" asked the little
lamplighter in an awe-struck voice. "Was he murdered?" and visions of
future notoriety flashed through his mind.
The colonel and Watt exchanged shocked glances.
"Here, Shrimplin, help me with Marsh!" said Watt. "We must get him out
of here at once!"
They lifted Langham in their arms and bore him into an adjoining room.
As they placed him upon the bed he recovered consciousness and clutched
Watt by the sleeve.
"I've been seeing all sorts of things to-night--it began while I lay in
that ditch with the pigs rooting about me! Where is my father, can't you
find him?" he demanded eagerly.
Watt turned his head away.
"Then that was not a dream--you saw it, too?" said Langham huskily. He
dropped back on his pillow. "Dead--Oh, my God!" he whispered, and was a
long time silent.
Harbison despatched Shrimplin and Custer in quest of a physician, and he
and Watt busied themselves with removing Marshall's wet clothes. When
this was done they washed the blood-stains from his face. He did not
speak while they were thus occupied; his eyes, wide and staring, were
fixed on vacancy. He was seeing only that still figure on the bed in the
room adjoining.
There was a brisk step on the stairs and they were joined by Doctor
Taylor.
"I declare, Marsh, I am sorry for this. You must have had quite a
tumble, how did you manage it?" he said, as he approached the bed.
Langham's eyes lost something of their intentness as they were turned
toward the physician, but he did not answer him. The doctor moved a step
aside with Colonel Harbison.
"Had he been drinking?" he asked in a low tone.
"I don't know," said the colonel.
"Shrimplin has gone for Mrs. Langham--I think they are here now. Don't
let her come up until I have made my examination. Will you see to this?"
And the colonel quitted the room and hurried down-stairs.
As he gained the floor below, Evelyn entered the house.
"How is Marsh, Colonel Harbison?" she asked.
Her face was colorless but her manner was unexcited; her lips even had a
smile for the colonel.
"Doctor Taylor is with him, and I trust he will be able to tell you that
Marshall's injuries are not serious!" said Harbison gently.
"Where is he? I must go to him--"
"The doctor prefers that you wait until he finishes his examination,"
said the colonel. He drew her into the library. "Evelyn, I must tell
you--you must know that something else--unspeakably dreadful--has
happened here to-night!"
"Yes?" The single word was no more than a breath on her full lips.
The colonel hesitated.
"You need not fear to tell me--whatever it is, I--I am prepared for
anything--" said Evelyn, with a pause between each word.
"The judge is dead," said Harbison simply. "My poor old friend is dead!"
"Dead--Marshall's father dead!" She looked at him curiously, with a
questioning light in her eyes. "You have not told me all, Colonel
Harbison!"
"Not told you all--" he repeated.
"How did he die?"
"I think--I fear he shot himself, but of course it may have been the
purest accident--"
"It was not an accident--" she cried with a sob. "Oh, don't mind what I
am saying!" she added quickly, seeing the look of astonishment on the
colonel's face.
"Mrs. Langham may come up if she wishes!" called Doctor Taylor, speaking
from the head of the stairs.
Evelyn moved down the hall and paused.
"Does Marsh know?" she asked of the colonel.
"Yes, unfortunately we carried him into his father's room," explained
Harbison.
Evelyn went slowly up the stairs. The horror of the situation was beyond
words. As she entered the room where Marshall lay, Watt Harbison and the
doctor silently withdrew into the hall, closing the door after them;
but Langham gave no immediate sign that he was aware of his wife's
presence.
"Marsh?" she said softly.
His palpable weakness and his cut and bruised face gave her an
instinctive feeling of tenderness for him. At the sound of her voice
Langham's heavy lids slid back and he gazed up at her.
"Have they told you?" he asked in an eager whisper.
"Yes," she said, and there was a little space of time when neither
spoke.
She drew a chair to his bedside and seated herself. In the next room she
could hear Doctor Taylor moving about and now and then an indistinct
word when he spoke with Watt Harbison. She imagined the offices they
were performing for the dead man. Then a door was softly closed and she
heard footsteps as they passed out into the hall.
Evelyn kept her place at the bedside without even altering the position
she had first taken, while her glance never for an instant left the
haggard face on the pillow. Beyond the open windows the silver light had
faded from the sky. At intervals a chill wind rustled the long curtains.
This, and her husband's labored breathing were the only sounds in the
leaden silence that followed the departure of the two men from the
adjoining room. She was conscious of a dreary sense of detachment from
all the world, the little circle of which she had been the center seemed
to contract until it held only herself. Suddenly Langham turned
uneasily on his pillow and glanced toward the window.
"What time is it?" he asked abruptly.
"It must be nearly day," said Evelyn. "How do you feel now, Marsh? Do
you suffer?"
He shook his head. His eyes were turned toward the window.
"What day is this?" he asked after a brief silence.
"What day?" repeated Evelyn.
"Yes--the day of the week, I mean?"
"It's Friday."
"They are going to hang John North this morning!" he said, and he
regarded her from under his half-closed lids. "I wonder what he is
thinking of now?" he added.
"Would the governor do nothing?" she asked in a whisper.
She was white to the lips.
"And the Herbert girl--I wonder what she is thinking of!"
"Hush, Marsh--Oh, hush! I--I can not--I must not think of it!" she
cried, and pressed her hands to her eyes convulsively.
"What does it matter to you?" he said grimly.
"Nothing in one way--everything in another!"
"I wish to God I could believe you!" he muttered.
"You may--on my soul, Marsh, you may! It was never what you
think--never--never!"
"It doesn't matter now," he said, and turned his face toward the wall.
"Marsh--" she began.
He moved impatiently, and she realized that it was useless to attempt to
alter what he had come to believe in absolutely. Beyond the windows the
first pale streaks of a spring dawn were visible, but the earth still
clothed itself in silence. The moments were racing on to the final act
of the pitiless tragedy which involved so many lives.
"Marsh--" Evelyn began again.
"I've been a dog to endure your presence in my house!" he said bitterly.
Evelyn was about to answer him when Doctor Taylor came into the room.
"Is he awake?" he questioned.
Langham gazed up into the doctor's face.
"Will I get well?" he demanded.