AND the next day before the sun was hot, his schemes too showed signs
of wilting.
This was a wonderful day; the sky had withdrawn itself to an infinite
altitude; a few fleecy white clouds raced with their shadows across the
wide expanse of the battle-field; the green wheat shoaled and surged
ceaselessly with elusive silvery undulations. On the great earthworks
the plums hung ripe and red, amid a tangled profusion of blackberries
and a mass of flowering vines. With their redundant, leafy growth of
young trees, the redoubts loomed up in abnormal proportions. It was not
easy for Maurice Brennett to distinguish, even with his field-glass,
the height of the parapet in the midst of the heavy foliage. But until
he reached the river he was glancing about listlessly enough, for
it was only an evanescent curiosity which he had chanced to express
concerning the country and its history, and which had induced Percy to
offer to drive with him over the battle-field, and show all its points
of interest.
The river was haunted by the odor of ferns; its rhythmic murmured
monody was altogether overborne by the voices of Percy and a young
acquaintance whom he had encountered on the ferry-boat, and who stood,
while _in transitu_, with one boot upon the hub of the buggy-wheel
and persistently talked “horse.” The conversation grated on Brennett’s
preoccupied mood, and, feigning an accession of interest in the scene
before him, he alighted from the vehicle, that he might bring his glass
to bear upon the massive isolated columns of masonry--the piers of the
old turnpike bridge--which rose suggestive and drear in the midst of
the shining current.
Toole noticed the gesture.
“The bredge got burned up in the war, Squair,” he observed
companionably, nodding his great unkempt, tawny head, on the back of
which an old straw hat was precariously perched.
Brennett lowered the glass and looked coldly at the officious speaker.
Then he turned his shoulder with a studied air of inattention, and once
more lifted the glass to his eyes.
His manner might have repressed another man in a similarly low station,
but Toole, in his good nature, was rather obtuse, and continued
with easy _camaraderie_, for he held himself the equal in all
essentials of the “Squair,” or any other man.
“I tell ye it sots a-body sorter catawampus plumb till now ter git
ter studyin’ ’bout’n that thar job. ’Twar the reskiest thing I ever
seen done; it beat my time! An off’cer fired that thar bredge with his
own hands, an’ that kem about powerful cur’ous, ’kase the off’cers
ginerally gits the glory whilst the men gits the resk. But I never look
at them old piers ’thout thinkin’ ’bout that feller. He was ez plucky
ez the nex’ one, an’ the finest-built man ye ever seen. He looked
sorter stavin’ somehows, an’ wild, an’ fiery, an’ he hed sech eyes in
his head that when he fixed ’em on a-body, ye jes’ knowed ye was bound
ter mosey, ef he hed tole ye ter mosey. I hed seen him wunst afore,
a-ridin’ along o’ Gen’al Crespeau in one o’ his raids up this ruver; he
was on the Gen’al’s staff.”
A strange thing had happened. The glass in Brennett’s hand was
trembling; his color had changed; he had slowly reversed his position
and was gazing intently at Toole.
“The looks o’ that thar man is fairly welded in my mind. I s’pose it’s
account o’ what he done hyar. We hed been a-scrimmagin’ some up thar
on Beargrass Creek, an’ hed been cut up cornsider’ble, an’ treated
ginerally with perslimness, ’kase thar warn’t none sca’cely of us. An’
jes’ ez it was cleverly dark, we kem a-dustin’, hickelty pickelty,
acrost this hyar old bredge,--on the run, I tell ye! They hed some
fraish cavalry in pursuit, what hedn’t been in the fight, an’ ef they
could hev made out ter foller us acrost the ruver jes’ then, they’d
a-scooped the whole bilin’ of us. We hed the pruttiest sorter chance o’
bein’ cut off from the main body, ’kase our horses was too dead beat
ter travel another foot, an’ our ammunition hed in an’ about gin out.
That thar old bredge hed been sorter perpared aforehand ter burn in
case of a retreat. The boys hed piled bresh up under the floorin’ an’
along the sides, an’ hed poured out some ile thar, but we never thunk
ez how the Yanks war a-goin’ ter be so close a-hint us, an’ our time so
short. Waal, when the order was gin ter fire it, some durned artillery
o’ theirn that hed got in battery up thar on Boker’s Knob, they seen
the move, an’ they begun ter fling shell an’ shot a good piece this
side o’ the ruver ter hender us from gittin’ at the bredge. An’ they
hed some sharp-shooters thar that kem inter the game, an’ they made it
look like hell broke loose round thar fur about two minits. We never
hed no fire balls nor nothink’ ter throw ez was sartain ter sot the
bredge a-burnin’. The men ordered thar jes’ hed ter trot down under
them yellin’ shells an’ singin’ minies, an’ kindle up the bresh with a
torch, same ez ef it was a wood fire in a chimbly. Waal, they never
got thar; some was killed, an’ some was wounded, an’ some jes’ turned
around an’ dusted! An’ hyar come that cavalry on the other side,--ye
could ‘a heard them fraish horses o’ theirn a-lopin’, ef ye hed been
ever so fur off, it ’peared like. In two minits more we’d ’a hed ’em
’mongst us, an’ our horses was too dead beat ter travel another foot.
Thar warn’t no time for orders nor nothink else. The fust I knowed this
hyar man--a mighty suddint man he was--he jes’ sprung out’n the dark
somewhar like ez ef he’d been flung from a cannon’s mouth. He rode!
rode like a streak o’ light! He went a-spurrin’ down ter the bredge
with a torch in his hand flamin’ out like a big, red feather. An’ when
he shot by me his eyes was blazin’ in his head, an’ his teeth was set
close--Lord! how he looked! An’ didn’t them sharp-shooters pay him most
pertic’lar attention when he hed got a-nigh that bredge. That torch
made him a fair target fur ’em. His horse was shot under him jes’ about
thar,” he paused, and pointed with his pipe-stem. “When I seen that
light sink I thought we was goners. But it didn’t set him back none. He
was up agin in a minit--an’ walk! you never seen a man walk like that.
Light on his feet! for all he was so tall an’ heavy. He walked, sir,
same as a kildee! He hed the furder e-end o’ that bredge a-roarin’ in
a second. He fired it in fifty places. He stood so long on that middle
pier, I thought he’d be burned alive. All the men was shoutin’ ter him
ter come back. He got off ’thout a hair of his head bein’ teched, I
hearn. ’Twas a meracle--a plumb meracle. Everybody that seen it said
so. Why the nex’ day I swum the ruver ter swap a few lies with them
Yankee pickets that we hed struck up an acquaintance with acrost the
water, an’ ter beg a chaw o’ terbacco, an’ smoke a pipe or two, sorter
sociable like, an’ they was jes’ a-talkin’ ’bout that thar man an’
how he acted. They said they’d like ter git a-holt o’ him fur a minit
or two jes’ ter see what he was made out’n. I tole ’em ez how thar
sharp-shooters hed better load up with silver ’stead o’ lead nex’ time
they got a show at that thar kildee o’ ourn. His life ’peared ter be
witched. But law! ’twarn’t more ’n a week arterward when I seen him on
the groun’ thar a-nigh Fort Despair, stone dead; he was killed in the
big battle, shot through the lungs and the head, and half crushed by
the carcass o’ his horse. I couldn’t holp bein’ sorry ez the war hedn’t
kerried off somebody ez was less account, an’ lef Major Fortescue. That
was his name--John Fortescue.”
He turned his slow eyes on his interlocutor, and laughed a little at
his own foolish sentimentality about a man he had never known.
Brennett precipitately raised the glass to his face; perhaps its
expression was not to be trusted even to the slow perceptions of this
unspeculative bumpkin. His hand grew rigid with the effort of his will
to still its muscles. But his breath was short; his lip was quivering
and white.
He might not have attained even this degree of self-control had not the
vivacious talk and laughter of the young men in the buggy convinced
him that Percy had heard nothing. But any day, on their way to or from
Chattalla, the ferry-man might rehearse the story. He might even tell
it to Miss St. Pierre. He was familiar and garrulous, and his avocation
kept him upon the highway; otherwise it would hardly be possible that
he could have ready speech of people in their social station.
It was only an accident--no design--that Brennett turned the powerful
glass upon that great flower-decked redoubt, called Fort Despair in
the years gone by. He had no sense of what he saw. All his faculties
were bent inward. He was striving to rally his courage, his tact, his
invention, but he could only remember helplessly how near success had
seemed, how deeply for its sake he had involved himself; he could only
repeat again and again that the man lived on the highway--he lived on
the highway, and in his very avocation he had a constant reminder of
the burning of the bridge, else there would be no need of a ferry-boat.
Brennett scarcely heard Toole’s voice still drawling on:
“An’ it’s a cur’us thing ’bout ’n that off’cer; what d’ ye think
happened hyar one night las’ winter? Bless God, ef I didn’t ’low fur a
spell ez I hed seen his ghost! fur a fack, I did! Thar war a gentleman
that kem from Gen’al Vayne’s house, an’ jes’ afore he rid down onto the
ferry”--
Toole had broken off abruptly,--oddly enough at the moment that the
field-glass was directed upon Fort Despair. And as Brennett became
suddenly aware of this, he was also conscious that his motions were
furtively watched. He lowered the glass and looked curiously at the
ferry-man, who drew down his hat and averted his face. His hold had
grown light upon the rope. There was a visible tremor along the sturdy
muscles of his bare, sun-embrowned arms. The color had deserted his
tanned face, leaving it sickly and sallow. He seemed all at once to
have grown gaunt.
Question as he might, the wily schemer felt baffled. He had no abstract
interest in humanity; his keen and insidious knowledge of human nature
and motives had been acquired by strictly utilitarian processes. Had
this man not loomed up formidable, with his aimless reminiscence,
Brennett would not have given him and his idiosyncrasies so much as a
contemptuous curse. But he saw in him now his destruction or his prey.
He had received a subtle intimation that the change in Toole’s manner
had some connection with the field-glass. And here was a mystery.
This was an illiterate country lout, with no knowledge of the science
of optics or the properties of concave and convex lenses. Brennett
understood at last, and it struck him so suddenly that it took his
breath away; Toole had been a soldier, and was aware of the long range
of this implement as he was aware of the long range of a rifle. And
after so many years, was Fort Despair, with its embrasures empty except
for the nestlings, with its crown of flowers, with its summer songs, a
terror to him still?
The sense of power restored Brennett. When he lifted the glass and
casually surveyed first the piers, then the far-reaching perspective
of the river; he even had room for a calculating cruelty of pleasure
in Toole’s long-drawn sigh of relief. But Toole was forgotten when the
glass was again suddenly turned upon the redoubt. Among the scarlet
trumpet-blossoms and the wind-tossed fruit-trees on the parapet the
shadows were fitful; but one was motionless--the similitude of a
man?--nay, the substance. Far, far away the ploughs were running; only
a meditative cow stood here and there in the wide strip of uncultivated
land that lay,--a series of out-cropping ledges and brambly
tangles,--between the rifle-pits of the old picket-line and the banks
of the river. He was out of reach of human sight; he had baffled the
law and human vengeance; conjecture had forgotten him; and still he was
within the compass of human ingenuity. The field-glass was so powerful;
the wits behind it were so sharp. And surely it seemed a strange thing
that a full-grown man, a man in poor garments, should be basking idly
like a lizard on the red clay parapet, while all the crop was “in the
grass,” and cotton-scraping wages were rising with the thermometer. He
was moving at last,--moving slowly. Could it be that the fluttering of
a red bandanna handkerchief with which the ferry-man mopped his brow
was a signal?
The figure,--a tall, erect figure,--skulked stealthily along the
parapet. Once it paused and turned; yes, it was turning its face
toward the river. But was the glass so perfect? Brennett asked himself
abruptly. It blurred; it mingled. Was there a breath upon it,--the wing
of a moth,--fallen pollen from a passing bee? Was some damnable trifle
to snatch from him this moment,--this meagre moment that he craved,--of
more value than ten years of his life! The next instant his sardonic
laughter set the air a-shiver. The fault lay in God’s handiwork. The
blurrings, the distortions, were in the man’s face! Ah! the good glass!
“I have come late to Fort Despair,” Brennett said to himself, as he
watched the figure drop down gradually out of sight, “but not too late
for a heavy onslaught yet.”
A tumult of exultation surged within him. The ferry-man, with all his
brain a-fire, with his heart bursting, with his liberty, it might be,
at stake, could not see what he knew was lurking there,--could not
be sure what, with that marvellously extended faculty of vision, the
stranger saw.
Brennett was laughing still as he turned to the brawny fellow who,
pallid and gasping, feebly tugged at the rope.
“There,” he said, pointing with his field-glass to the great, blooming
redoubt, “is the reason that in the country a man’s greed for gain is
blunted.”
Toole stared at him in amaze and said nothing.
“Luxury is so easy to come by. A graceless lout like that, lying there
in the sun on the parapet of Fort Despair, wouldn’t bestir himself for
a million. And I’m not so sure he’s wrong. He hears the river sing.
The wind keeps him company. Now and then a ripe plum falls in his
reach. If a snake comes, he makes great shift to throw a stone, and
dozes. The sun mints gold for him all day. Give up this wealth for a
ploughman’s wages, or the fourth of a scanty crop on somebody’s acres
exhausted with fifty years of cotton-growing? Not he!”
The boat was moving smoothly once more. The cords on the brawny arms
stood out with renewed effort. Toole felt as if he were laying hold
again on life. A long, strong breath of relief was swelling his lungs.
The hot tears of pity for himself stood in his eyes.
“What a pore fool I be,” he thought compassionately. “I seen from
the fust ez the man hed a field-glass, an’ was a-swingin’ it round
the country. An’ I mus’ git so catawampus fur nothink! An’ he air a
stranger hyar, an’ dunno Graffy when he see him. Ef it hed been anybody
else, though!” He trembled again at the idea.
“Not he!” pursued Brennett. “He looks at you as you pull this heavy
boat back and forth, for money and the hope of ease some day, and I am
afraid he laughs. Perhaps he laughs, too, at Mr. Percy, who professes
to be a man of leisure, and who works very hard, often against great
odds, to amuse himself. He doesn’t know me, I dare say; if he did, I am
sure he would laugh at me.”
“What be your work?” asked Toole inquisitively.
“I might accurately define it as ‘tempting Providence,’” said Brennett.
Toole was a trifle dubious.
“I reckon we’re all in that trade,” he rejoined piously.
Brennett frowned in sudden irritation; he had used the words as
preliminary to an exposition of the peculiar and excessive risks and
anxieties of speculating in cotton futures. Inadvertently they were
too true. “Well, crack that nut,” he muttered contemptuously.
They were nearing the land, and his purpose was served. He had
succeeded in allaying Toole’s fears and absorbing his attention. Percy
would never hear that recital of military experience, if Maurice
Brennett were the man he took himself for.
He was about to return to the buggy, but checked himself with an
after-thought. It went against the grain, but it was best to be civil.
“I’ll explain my operations in the line of ‘tempting Providence’ some
day as I cross again,” he said agreeably. And, as he stepped into the
buggy, Percy gathered up the lines and drove slowly along the steep
bank, leaving Toole looking placidly after them, marvelling at his
folly in having caused himself so poignant an anguish of fright.
But they did not continue their drive over the battle-field to-day.
Brennett remembered abruptly that there were some important papers to
be sent him by express, and which were already due. Thus it was that
before the elusive, amethystine, matutinal haze had lifted from the
landscape, leaving it a trifle crude of color, they were in Chattalla.
The dew still gleamed on the leaves of the sycamore in the court-house
yard; the blue-jays chattered, and quarrelled, and fairly fought in
the court-house windows; the grass was high and rank. An old darkey
with a scythe was listlessly mowing it in the intervals of recounting
a miraculous story to two small white boys, who hung spell-bound upon
his every word. A knot of lawyers sat and talked amicably on the
court-house steps, nothing suggesting the prospective conflicts of
the day save here and there a roll of legal cap. One of them, a young
sprig, was trying to train a dog to smoke a pipe. Some hill-country
fellows lay in the grass, or stood about under the tree, having jogged
in before day to attend to business in court. They bantered each other;
now and then their jolly laughter rang out. A peaceful scene--almost
pastoral.
Brennett and Percy gravitated naturally toward it, for the package of
papers had not yet arrived at the express office; the sun was growing
hot on the paving-stones of the Square, and the dust was rising. They
lounged through the gate, which clanged noisily behind them as they
made their way to the steps. Percy was not sorry when Brennett strolled
off alone, for he had been silent, or monosyllabic, throughout the
drive, and his host craved livelier companionship.
Brennett had no affinity with the lower strata of society--no
good-natured leniency for ignorance, uncouthness, and shiftless
poverty; that he should seek to join the rough fellows under the
tree, as they joked the sheriff who was canvassing among them for
re-election, was in itself so uncharacteristic a thing that he felt all
the awkwardness incident to being out of one’s sphere as he hazarded
the remark--
“The warmest day of the season, gentlemen.”
“That’s so,” they assented politely.
His eye was glittering, excited. The delicately arched nostrils of his
sharp, hooked nose were quivering; the intricate lines between his
eyebrows were so dark that they seemed to have been cleverly traced
there with a bit of charcoal; the gracious sunshine that dripped
through the leaves fell, as he took off his hat and fanned himself with
it, on those gray glimmers which should not have come so early in his
close-clipped hair.
“Fine prospect for fruit,” he said, addressing himself especially to
the sheriff, a tall, well-knit man, wearing a brown linen suit, the
trousers thrust into the long legs of a pair of heavy boots, which were
ornamented with large spurs.
“Very fine,” assented the officer.
“I suppose you ship great quantities from this county?”
“No, scarcely any.”
“No--no,” drawled a robust young fellow with a florid face, black hair,
and wide, black eyes, who was lying luxuriously in the grass; “ship
cotton. That’s the dictum. Cotton ’s money--mebbe more--mebbe less; but
cotton’s money _every time_!”
“Good local market for fruit, then?” persisted Brennett.
“Why, no,” said the sheriff; “because pretty much everybody in town has
got a good big garden-spot of his own, and fruit-trees and vines in
plenty; we ain’t scrimped for room, you see. Fruit’s dirt cheap here.”
“I supposed that it would command a fine price, as I saw a man
gathering even the volunteer fruit growing on one of those old redoubts
not far from the river.”
“A-law!” mumbled a toothless sexagenarian, “them places air a-roamin’
with the haunts. An’ wunst thar was wusser sights yit ter be seen thar;
they was soakin’ with blood. Leastways, Fort Despair was. I never
know’d thar was a critter in the county ez would tech fruit that grow’d
out’n that sile.”
“Fort Despair--that is the name,” said Brennett, laughing a little; “it
is near the river--in a line with the ferryman’s house.”
For some reason which Brennett could not divine, the other men glanced
down, a trifle uneasily, at the young fellow in the grass. His face was
smitten by some strong emotion; he lay quite still, his wide, black
eyes, suddenly full of an untranslated meaning, turned absently up to
the sky.
“And,” thought Brennett, “to talk of ignorance!” That these men,
these louts, should have something in their minds which it might ruin
_him_ not to know! He experienced an unreasoning anger that their
lives should be less transparent than they seemed; that he should grope
blindly among them; that, at this crisis, he should be hampered by
those complex elements of hidden sensitiveness, and heart-history, and
mental drama, which consonantly make up life in worthier spheres. Under
the influence of this irritation, he grew all at once bold and fluent.
“I dare say,” he remarked, with a laugh, “the volunteer fruit is the
ferryman’s orchard. I noticed him signal with a red handkerchief, as
we were crossing the river, to the man gathering plums on the fort.”
He had replaced his hat; he was filliping the ash from the cigar in
his hand; he was turning away. “Very odd--the face of that man on the
fort--very odd.”
A grip like a vise fell upon his arm. He was suddenly shaken--shocked.
He looked down at the sheriff’s hand.
“Take it off,” he said, between his set teeth, “or, by the Lord, I’ll
cut it off.”
“How was the man’s face odd?” gasped the officer, in the breathless
interval of roaring to a negro boy to bring his horse.
He had scarcely relaxed his hold, but Brennett accommodated himself to
it, remembering the crisis.
“I can’t say exactly,” he replied, trembling a little; “some curious
facial distortion--he mowed like an idiot.”
The grip slid from his arm.
“A marked man in a thousand!” exclaimed the officer.
“But you ought to know that stealing a little fruit is only technically
a misdemeanor; there would surely be no prosecutor for such a trespass
as that,” remarked the innocent Mr. Brennett.
“Trespass! This is murder,” said the sheriff gravely. He took a warrant
from his pocket and handed it to a deputy, who galloped off at a
tremendous rate of speed across the stony Square.
Brennett changed color. He had not supposed it so serious as this.
Still it did not touch him.
The young man, at whom they had all looked doubtfully upon the mention
of the ferryman, still lay on the grass, his head supported on his
arms. He had grown pale; the shadows flickered over his face; his eyes
were dilated as if they saw more or less than was before them.
“It hev come at last,” he cried passionately, “I knew ’twould. But it
ain’t brung no comfort. All the law in the land can’t set my brother’s
plough a-runnin’, and let his mother hear him singin’ at his work.
It can’t gin him back a minit ter think on the Lord afore he went so
suddint ter jedgment. It can’t hender the grass from a-growin’ on his
grave, an’ his folks from furgittin’ him. I feel him slippin’, slippin’
away day arter day; an’ afore his fish-traps is rotten, an’ his gun
bar’l is rusty, he’ll be clar gone--the very thought of him--off’n the
face o’ the yearth! An’ somebody else will live up all them years of
time the Lord medjured out fur his space in the worl’.” He turned his
face upon his elbow and said no more.
The men who had crowded up to the scene of excitement shrank away from
him after this outburst. But it gave Brennett an instant to recover
himself. And he recovered himself with a sharp pang of disappointment.
Of what avail was all this to him--_he_ had no purpose to serve
by the incarceration of the man who mowed like an idiot among the
florescent splendors of Fort Despair.
He looked at the prosecutor, prone upon the ground. He looked at the
sheriff. The official had arranged with a deputy to open court--he was
about to mount. Had he taken no note of that significant statement
concerning the ferryman’s signalling red handkerchief? There was only
a moment for Brennett, or all his finesse might yet be in vain--even
now an officer was riding, like the wind, miles away. His haste and
anxiety to assure himself that his craft had taken effect, impaired for
a moment his judgment.
“I suppose I shall not be wanted here,” he said, “unless a warrant is
sworn out against Toole as accessory after the fact.”
The sheriff cast upon him a swift glance of suspicion and disapproval.
“Toole will be taken,” he said tartly, “according to the law which
allows a sheriff, knowing a felony has been perpetrated, and having
good ground for suspicion, to make an arrest without a warrant. You’ll
be needed to testify on the committing trial.” Then he mounted and rode
away.
“Blest,” he said, “if that soft-spoken dandy chap ain’t trying to learn
Joe Bates his business! Mighty keen for Tom not to be left out in
the cold, sure. Holds some kind of grudge against the pore fellow, I
reckon.”
The incidents of the day had jarred terribly upon Percy, making
dissonant havoc among the _scherzo_ harmonies, of which his
life was composed. He had hastily joined Brennett upon observing the
excitement in the crowd, and in helpless amaze discovered that his
friend was the mainspring of the commotion.
“Damn it, Brennett,” he cried fretfully, as the sheriff rode off,
leaving them alone, “your eyes are too sharp. I saw nothing when we
were crossing the river. You can’t expect me to stay here and hear your
testimony. I’ll go to the hotel and wait for you there. If you want
me you can send for me. I wouldn’t see Graffy or Toole either, for
a million, though I dare say nothing very horrible will come of it.
Rumor goes that the shooting was self-defence. But these things shock
me,--they make me ill.”
Percy was a punctilious host. This grating, disagreeable accident, as
he construed it, had thoroughly disgusted him with his friend; yet
he looked deprecatingly at Brennett, while avowing an intention of
deserting him, a stranger in the town, and a guest, in the unpleasant
episode of testifying in a criminal case. If Brennett had urged an
objection he would have repressed his finical delicacy, and sat out the
proceedings.
The rejoinder surprised him beyond measure. Brennett seemed to have
taken no notice of the breach of hospitality. “Self-defence,” he
repeated. “Then it may not be impossible to procure bail.”
“Drop it, Brennett, drop the unsavory subject. I shall dream of jails,
and pining prisoners, and bolts and bars, for a week. Poor Toole--it’s
hard on an active fellow like that.”
“You would not go on his bail-bond?” asked Brennett, with a look
singularly like an expression of apprehension.
“Not unless I want to be beat out of several thousand dollars the
quickest in this world--those men are in a panic--no obligation would
have any weight with them. Can’t you drop the subject?” Percy added
frowningly. “Are we to stand here and gloat over the details all day.”
He looked angrily and doubtfully at his friend. Was Brennett coarse
enough to enjoy an excitement like this? Did he relish his _rôle_
in the painful and pitiful little drama? Did he have no natural,
unreasoning, foolish, humane regret, that he should be the chosen
instrument of vengeance, to work justice, perhaps, but woe, and horror,
and despair, in those humble lives? His face was thoughtful, his eyes
downcast; he seemed revolving some mighty mental puzzle; he hardly
noticed Percy, and for the first time it struck the young fellow that
he did not altogether understand this man. “I wish you were in New
Orleans, where I found you!” Percy thought with inhospitable discontent.
“I am going, Brennett,” he added aloud. “You’ll know where to send for
me if you want me.”
“All right,” said the other.
As Percy turned hastily away he almost fell over the man lying in the
grass.
“Ah, I beg your pardon,” he said.
The man lifted the arm he had thrown over his face. Percy recognized
the prosecutor and went on with a shudder.
He did not leave the hotel again during the day; he had no idea how it
had passed, for, as he and his friend drove out of the town close upon
twilight, he asked no question. The first intimation of the result was
given him when they reached the river--it lay broad and red beneath the
broad red sky; the ferry-boat, a dark blotch upon its brilliance, close
in to the bank, pulsed with the crimson current. But the craft was a
useless thing to-day, for no one was there. Percy glanced up at the
weather-beaten log-cabin, the poor and humble neighbor of the flaunting
and splendid redoubt.
“No good in calling,” said Brennett, with a short, satiric laugh. “He
won’t hear you. We shall have to try the ford. It is six miles higher
up the river, somebody told me.”
“The nearest safe ford is ten miles higher,” said Percy, as he turned
the horses.
“It won’t last long,” Brennett remarked cheerfully. “The superintendent
has been telegraphed--so I am told--and has replied that another
ferryman will be here to-morrow.”
Their new route took them in front of the little weather-beaten house.
There was a “washing” still hanging, late though it was, on the clothes
line; a group of huddled children, with a pale fright on their faces,
stood in the door; a baby, in a tattered red dress, sat on the floor
and bleated fitfully; a woman, with yellow hair, that hung loose about
her shoulders and fluttered in the wind, was walking back and forth,
ceaselessly, tearlessly, striking her hands together as she walked,
saying no word, making no moan.
Percy hastily averted his eyes. He gave the off-horse a stinging cut
with the whip, and the dreary little house and its splendid neighbor
were in the fainting, fading distance.