blow had blanched her face and paralyzed her speech. It was pitiable to
see her ineffectual effort to regain control of herself. At length she
sank down on a shuck-bottom chair by the door of the tent.
"Yer's some smellin'-salts," said a woman standing by, and she thrust
forward her leathery hand holding an uncorked bottle of ammonia.
"He didn't do it," murmured Mrs. Grayson, when she had revived a little.
"Our Tommy wouldn't do sech a thing. Go up there,"--and she pointed to
the pulpit,--"you go up there, Barb'ry, an' tell the folks 't our Tommy
never done it."
"Come, mother; let's go home," said Barbara faintly, for all her energy
had gone now.
"I'll go with you," said Mely.
But Mrs. Grayson did not wish to go; she was intent on staying in order
to tell the folks that Tommy "never, never done sech a thing."
She yielded at length to the gentle compulsion of Barbara and Mely and
the neighbors who gathered about, and got into the wagon. Mely, who knew
every inch of the road, took the reins, and drove slowly toward the
Grayson house, picking a way among the stumps, roots, and holes of the
new road.
XI
FRIENDS IN THE NIGHT
The ride seemed to Barbara almost interminable. If she could have left
her half-distracted mother she would have got out of the wagon and run
through the fields, in hope of finding Tom and knowing from him the
whole truth, and making up her mind what was to be done. When at length
the wagon reached the gate in front of the Grayson house, Bob McCord was
in waiting. He had heard that a bear had been seen on Broad Run, and had
left the camp-meeting early, intent on a departure before daylight in
pursuit of that "varmint." He had known nothing of the shooting, but he
told Barbara that, when he came near the Grayson house, he had seen Tom
run across the road and into the house,--and that Tom came out again
almost at once, and reached the gate in time to meet the sheriff and
give himself up. The sheriff had dismounted one of the men with him, and
putting Tom in the saddle they had gone toward Moscow on a gallop. Bob
wasn't near enough to hear what Tom had said when the sheriff took him;
but knowing that something must be wrong, he had waited for the return
of the wagon.
It was some relief to the tension of Barbara's feelings to know that Tom
was now in the hands of the lawful authorities and well on his way to
Moscow, where he would be out of the reach of the angry crowd that was
surging to and fro around the camp-meeting.
But there followed the long night of uncertainty. The mother sat moaning
in her chair, only rousing herself enough now and then to assure some
newly arrived neighbor that "poor Tom never done it." Barbara confided
only to Mely McCord the very faint hope she entertained that Tom was not
guilty. She couldn't believe that he would break his solemn promise,
made that very evening. But in her secret heart she could not get over
the fact that George Lockwood was lying in the woods stark and dead, and
no one was so likely to have killed him as her impetuous brother.
About 1 o'clock, the dreadful monotony of the night was dreadfully
broken by the arrival of the deputy-sheriff. He spoke in an
unsympathetic, official voice, but in a manner externally respectful. He
must search Tom's room; and so, taking a candle, he went to the room
alone, and soon came back bringing an old-fashioned single-barrel,
flint-lock pistol, of the kind in use in the early part of the century.
It had belonged to Tom's father, and the officer had found it in one of
the drawers in the room. Barbara sat down and shut her eyes as the
deputy passed through the sitting-room with the weapon, but Mrs. Grayson
called the officer to her.
"I say, Mister--I don't know your name. Let me speak to you."
"Yes, ma'am," said the man, "My name's Markham"; and he came and stood
near her.
"Air you the son of Lijy Markham?" Mrs. Grayson always identified people
by recalling their filiation, and she could not resist this genealogical
tendency in her mind even in the hour of sorest trial.
"Yes," said the officer.
"Well, now, what I want to say is that Tommy didn't kill that man. I'm
his mother, an' I had ought to know, an' I tell yeh so. You hadn't ought
to 'a' took 'im up fer what he didn't do."
Markham was puzzled to know what to reply, but he answered presently:
"Well, the court'll find out about it, you know, Mrs. Grayson." The
man's official stiffness was a little softened by the tones of her
heart-broken voice.
Barbara never could tell how she got through the hours from half-past 10
to 3 o'clock. Neighbors were coming and going--some from a desire to be
helpful, others from curiosity, but Mely remained with them. Bob McCord
was too faithful to leave the Graysons when he might be needed but it
was impossible for him to remain awake from mere sympathy. When Markham
was gone, he lay down on the end of the porch farthest from the door,
and slept the sleep of the man of the Bronze Age. His fidelity was like
that of a great dog--he gave himself no anxiety, but he was ready when
wanted.
At 3 o'clock Barbara said to Mely: "I can't stand it a minute longer; I
can't wait for daybreak. Wake up your father and ask him to hitch up
Blaze. I'm going to see Tom as quick as I can get there. I ought to have
started before."
"I'm a-goin' too," said Mrs. Grayson.
"No, mother; you stay. It's too much for you."
"Me, Barb'ry?" The mother's lip quivered, and she spoke in a tremulous
voice, like that of a pleading child. "Me stay 't home an' my Tommy--my
boy--in jail! No, Barb'ry; you won't make me stay 't home. I'm goin' t'
Moscow, ef it kills me. I must. I'm his mother, Barb'ry. He's the on'y
boy 't 's left. All the rest is dead an' gone. An' him in jail!"
"Pap! pap! you wake up!" Mely was calling to her father lying there
asleep, and Barbara came and stood in the door, fain to hasten Bob
McCord's slow resurrection from the deeps of unconsciousness and at the
same time to escape from the sight of her mother's despair.
As Bob got up and comprehended the urgent request that the horse be
harnessed immediately, Barbara's attention was drawn to a man coming
swiftly down the road in the moonlight. The figure was familiar. Barbara
felt sure she recognized the new-comer; and when, instead of stopping to
fumble for the gate-bolt, he rested his hands on the fence alongside and
sprang over, she knew that it was Hiram Mason, whom she had not seen
since the evening, nearly two weeks before, when they had peeled apples
together. It would be hard to say whether pleasure or pain predominated
in her mind when she recognized him.
By the time Mason got over the fence Bob McCord had gone to the stable,
and Mely had reentered the house. Barbara went forward and met Hiram on
the steps to the porch.
"Poor, dear Barbara!" were his words as he took her hand. At other times
her pride had been nettled by his pity, but her desolate soul had not
fortitude enough left to refuse the solace of his tender words.
"I came the very moment I heard," he said. "I was staying away down at
Albaugh's, and Ike was the only one of them on the camp-ground. He was
so excited, and so anxious to see and hear, that he didn't get home till
2 o'clock. And only think I was sleeping quietly and you in such
trouble!"
"You mustn't come in," said Barbara. "We're a disgraced family, and you
mustn't come in here any more."
"What notions!" answered Hiram. "I'm here to stay. Let me ask your
mother." He took hold of her arms and put her aside very gently and
pushed on into the house, where Mely was pinning on Mrs. Grayson's wide
cape preparatory to her ride to Moscow.
"Mrs. Grayson--" said he.
"W'y, ef 't ain't the master!" she interrupted in a trembling voice.
"Mr. Mason, Tommy never killed that man, an' he hadn't ought to 'a' been
took up."
"Mrs. Grayson, won't you let me stay with you a few days, now you're in
trouble, and help you through?"
The old lady looked at him for a moment before she was able to reply.
"It ain't fer a schoolmaster an' a preacher's son to come here, now
folks'll be a-sayin' 't we're--'t we're--murderers." This last word,
uttered with tremulous hesitation, broke down her self-control, and Mrs.
Grayson fell to weeping again.
"I'm going to stay by you awhile, and we'll see what can be done," said
Mason. "They've taken your boy, and you'll let me fill his place a
little while, won't you, now?"
"God bless you, my son!" was all the weeping woman could say; and
Barbara, who had followed Hiram into the room and stood behind him while
he talked to her mother, turned her face to the dark window and wept
heartily for the first time in this sorrowful night.
"You'd jest orter 'a' heerd the master a-talkin' to Mrs. Grayson," said
Mely McCord afterward. "He stood there lookin' at her with his head
turned kind-uh cornerin'-like, un his words was so soft-like un
pitiful;--lawsey! ef he did n' make me feel jes like 's ef my heart wuz
a-comin right up into my mouth."
Bob McCord led old Blaze up in front of the gate, and all in the house
went down to the road.
"Mr. McCord," said Mason, "I want to drive that wagon."
"I don't b'lieve you kin do this fust piece uv road with nothin' but a
weakly moonshine," said Bob.
"Oh, yes! I've been over it a good many times." Only Barbara knew how
often Hiram had traversed it.
When the schoolmaster had helped Mrs. Grayson and Barbara into the
wagon, and while Mely was assisting them to adjust themselves, he went
to the horse's head, where McCord was standing, and said in a low voice:
"They told me there was a rush to lynch him last night; and Ike Albaugh
says that Jake Hogan, who worked for them this last harvest-time, told
him at the camp-ground that the Broad Run boys were going to make
another of their visits to Moscow to-night if the coroner's inquest was
against Tom. Now, Tom _may_ be innocent; and he ought to have a fair
show anyhow."
"I'd better see to _that_!" said Bob. "I 'low I'll jest drop in amongst
'em over onto the run, kind-uh accidental-like, afore dinner-time
to-day, an' throw 'em off, one way er 'nother, ez the case may be."
Mrs. Grayson was seated in a chair placed in the springless wagon for
her comfort, while Hiram and Barbara sat on a board laid across from one
side to the other of the wagon. They departed out of sight slowly, Mason
guiding the horse carefully over the rough ground in the obscurity of a
moonlight not yet beginning to give way to the break of day.
XII
A TRIP TO BROAD RUN
As the wagon disappeared, Bob called to his daughter, who had been left
in charge.
"Mely! Mely! You jes stir up the kitchen fire there, honey, un bile me a
cup of coffee, agin I go home un fetch my gun wi' the dogs, un come
back." (Bob knew there was no coffee at home.) "I'm a-goin' over onto
Broad Run arter bears."
"Aw, now, pap, you're all-ays off fer a hunt at the wrong time. Don'
choo go away now, un the folks in sech a world uh trouble. Un besides,
mammy hain't got anough to eat in the house to do tell you come back."
All this Mely said in a minor key of protest, which she had learned from
her mother, who was ever objecting in a good-natured, pathetic, impotent
way to her husband's thriftless propensities.
"I know what I'm up to, Mely. They's reasons, un the schoolmaster
knows'em. You keep your tongue still in yer head, honey. On'y be shore
to remember, 'f anybody axes about me, 't I'm arter bears. Jes say't
bears uz been seed over onto Broad Run, un't pap couldn't noways keep
still, he wuz so sot on goin' over 'n' sayin' howdy to 'em. That'll
soun' like me, un folks 'll never mistrust."
"But mammy hain't akchelly got anough fer the children to eat,"
responded Mely.
"Well, I 'low to fetch some bear meat home, un you kin borry some meal
from Mrs. Grayson's bar'el tell I git back. 'F they knowed what kind uh
varmints I wuz arter over there, they wouldn't begrudge me nuthin', Sis.
Come, now, hump yer stumps; fer I'll be back in a leetle less'n no
time."
And Bob went off in the darkness. In about a dozen minutes he returned
with his powder-horn slung about his shoulders over his hunting-shirt
and carrying his rifle. He was closely followed by Pup, Joe, and Seizer,
his three dogs, whose nervous agitation, as they nosed the ground in
every direction, contrasted well with the massive stride of their
master. Having swallowed such a breakfast as Mely could get him out of
Mrs. Grayson's stores, and put a pone of cold corn-bread into the bosom
of his hunting-shirt, McCord was off for the Broad Run region at the
very first horizon-streak of daybreak. Though game was but a secondary
object in this expedition, he could not but feel an exhilaration which
was never wanting when he set out in the early morning with his gun on
his shoulder and in the congenial companionship of his dogs. Hercules or
Samson could hardly have rejoiced in a greater assurance of physical
superiority to all antagonists. The most marked trait in Bob's mental
outfit was the hunter's cunning, a craft that took delight in tricks on
man and beast. The fact that he was akin to some of the families on
Broad Run enhanced the pleasure he felt in his present scheme to get the
better of them. He would "l'arn the Broad Run boys a thing or two that'd
open their eyes." His great plump form shook with merriment at the
thought. Plovers rose beating the air and whistling in the morning light
as he passed, and the dogs flushed more than one flock of young
prairie-chickens, which went whirring away just skimming the heads of
the grass in low level flight, but Bob's ammunition was not to be spent
on small game this morning. By 7 o'clock the increasing heat of the sun
made the wide, half-parched plain quiver unsteadily to the vision. The
sear August prairie had hardened itself against the heat--the grass and
the ox-eyes held their heads up without sign of withering or misgiving:
these stiff prairie plants never wilt--they die in their boots. But the
foliage of the forest which Bob skirted by this time appeared to droop
in very expectation of the long oppressive hours of breathless heat yet
to come. In this still air even the uneasy rocking poplar-leaves were
almost stationary on their edge-wise stems.
Steady walking for more than three hours had brought Bob to the
outskirts of the Broad Run region, and had sobered the dogs; these now
sought fondly every little bit of shade, and lolled their tongues
continuously. The first person that Bob McCord encountered after
entering the grateful region of shadow was one Britton--"ole man
Britton," his neighbors called him. This old settler led a rather
secluded life. Neither he nor his wife ever left home to attend
meetings or to share in any social assembly. They had no relatives among
the people of the country, and there was a suspicion of mystery about
them that piqued curiosity. Some years before, a traveler, in passing
through the country, gave out that he recognized Britton, by his name
and features, as one whom he had known in Virginia, where he said
Britton had been an overseer and had run away with his employer's wife.
The neighbors had never accepted the traveler's story in this way;
though they were ready to believe that the woman might have run away
with Britton. When Bob came in sight of him the saturnine old man was
standing looking over the brink of a cliff into a narrow valley through
which coursed the waters of Broad Run, steadying himself meanwhile by a
sapling. Bob, following his first impulse, deposited his gun, beckoned
his close-following little dog back, and crept stealthily towards
Britton, keeping a tree between him and the old man when he could.
Arrived in reach he made a spring, and laying firm hold of his victim by
grasping him under the arms, he held him for a moment over the edge of
the precipice. Then he brought him back and set him safely down as one
might a child, and said innocently:
"W'y, Mr. Britton, I do declare, 'f I hadn't'a' cotcht you, you'd'a'
fell off!"
The shriveled old man drew back to a safe distance from the brink, and
tried to force his insipid face into a smile, but he was pale from the
deadly fright. Big Bob rubbed his legs and gave way to a spasm of
boisterous boyish laughter.
"Seed any bear signs 'round about, Mr. Britton?" he said, when his laugh
had died into a broad grin.
"No."
"What wuz you lookin' over the cliff fer?"
"Zeke Tucker. He's workin' fer me, an' he's been gone all the mornin'
arter my clay-bank hoss. I'm afeard sumpin's happened."
"'F I find him I'll set the dogs onto him an' hurry him up a leetle,"
said Bob, laughing again and going on, intent now on encountering Zeke,
alone, for purposes of his own.
[Illustration: MR. BRITTON AND BIG BOB.]
Then, when he had gone a little way, he stopped and looked back at the
retreating old man, and grinned as he noted the doleful way in which his
over-large trousers bagged behind.
"Mr. Britton," he called, "which way'd Zeke go?"
"Up the crick; the hoss is up thar sumers."
Having secured this information, Bob went on, descending the cliff to
the valley through which Broad Run rattled its shallow waters--a valley
so broken and rugged as to render it almost unfit for cultivation. This
glen was settled, as such regions are wont to be, by a race of "poor
whiteys," or rather by a mixture of people belonging to two stocks
originally different. The one race was descended from the lowest of the
nomads, vagrants, and other poverty-stricken outcasts that had been
spirited away from England by means legal and illegal, to be sold for a
long term into bondage in the American colonies; the other, from the
roughest wing of the great Scotch-Irish immigration of the last
century--the hereditary borderers who early fought their way into the
valleys and passes of the Alleghanies. Equally thriftless in their
habits, and equally without any traditions of their origin, members of
these two tribes mingled easily. The people in whom the Scotch-Irish
blood preponderates are more given to violence, but their humor, their
courage, and their occasional bursts of energy indicate that they have a
chance of emerging from barbarism; while the poor whiteys of English
descent are most of them beyond the reach of evolution, foreordained to
extinction by natural selection, whenever the pressure of overpopulation
shall force them into the competition for existence.
With that instinctive unthriftiness which is the perpetual
characteristic of the poor whitey in all his generations, the Broad Run
people had chosen the least inviting lands within a hundred miles for
their settlement, as though afraid that by acquiring valuable homes they
might lose their aptitude for migration; or afraid, perhaps, that
fertile prairies might tempt them to toil. The convenience of a brook by
their doors, and a wood that was uncommonly "handy," had probably
determined their choice. Then, too, the circumjacent cliffs gave them a
sense of being shut in from prairie winds, and put some limit to the
wanderings of their half-starved "critters." For the rest, their demands
upon the land were always very modest--a few bushels of "taters," for
roasting in the ashes; a small field of maize, for roasting-ears,
hominy, and corn-dodgers; and such pumpkins and beans as could be grown
intermingled with the hills of corn, were about all that one of these
primitive families required, beyond what could be got with a gun or a
fishing-line. The only real luxuries affected were onions and
melons--"ing-uns un watermillions," in Broad Run phrase. Their few pigs
and cows ran at large, and lived as they could. Oxen they rarely owned,
but whenever a man was in the least prosperous he was sure to possess a
single inferior saddle-horse, though he sometimes had no saddle but a
blanket girt with a surcingle. A horse was kept at the service of
neighbors; for, like other savages, the Broad Run people were hospitable
and generous to members of their own tribe, and the only economy they
understood was that of borrowing and lending, by which a number of
families were able to make use of the same necessary articles. This
happy device, for example, enabled one circulating flat-iron to serve an
entire neighborhood.
The Broad Run people entertained a contempt for the law that may have
been derived from ancestors transported for petty felonies. It seemed to
them something made in the interest of attorneys and men of property. A
person mean enough to "take the law onto" his neighbor was accounted too
"triflin'" to be respectable; good whole-souled men settled their
troubles with nature's weapons,--fists, teeth, and finger-nails,--and
very rarely, when the offense was heinous and capital, with bullets or
buckshot. Men who were habitually disgraceful in any way--as, for
example, those who could not get drunk without beating their wives--were
punished, without the delay of trial, by the infliction of penalties
more ancient than statutes, such as ducking, riding on a rail, whipping,
or sudden banishment. Hanging by lynch-law was reserved for the two
great crimes of horse-stealing and murder.
They put the killing of George Lockwood into the category of
grudge-murder, since he was shot at night "without giving him a show for
his life." But the shooting did not immediately concern Broad Run, and
Broad Run folks would not have felt themselves responsible for seeing
justice done, if it had not been for concurring circumstances. Lynch law
is an outbreak of the reformatory spirit among people of low or recent
civilization. Like other movements for reform, it is often carried by
its own momentum into unforeseen excesses. It had happened recently that
two brothers, thieves of the worst class, who had infested the country
and had long managed to escape from the law, had been sent to prison for
four years. They were believed to be guilty of an offense much blacker
than the robbery for which they were sentenced; but the murder of a
strange peddler had escaped notice until the body had been discovered
two years after the crime, and the crime could not then be brought home
by legal evidence. Their attorney, a lawyer notorious for chicanery,
had, by appeal, got a new trial on account of some technical error in
the proceedings of the lower court. The county had already been heavily
taxed to defray the expense of convicting them, and the people were
exasperated by the prospect of a new expense with the possible escape of
the criminals. Public expenses, it is true, sat lightly on Broad Run;
the taxes levied on its barren patches and squalid cabins were not
considerable, but Broad Run made much of the taxes it did pay, and it
caught the popular indignation, and was indignant in its own prompt and
executive fashion. The very night before the new trial was to begin, the
doors of the jail were forced, and the two prisoners were shot to death
by a mob. On the jail door was left a notice, warning the attorney of
the criminals to depart from the county within thirty hours, on pain of
suffering a like fate. Though Broad Run got most of the credit for this
prompt vindication of justice, the leaving of this legible notice upon
the door was taken as evidence of the complicity of some whose education
was better than that of the settlers at the Run. This execution had
taken place but three months before the shooting of George Lockwood, and
the mob was like a were-wolf. Perhaps I ought rather to liken it to
those professional reformers who, having abolished slavery, or waved
their hats while others abolished it, proceed to inquire for the next
case on the docket, and undertake forthwith to do away with capital
punishment or the marriage relation. Having found its local
self-complacency much increased by success in discovering a method
cheaper and more expeditious than those of the courts, Broad Run was
readily inclined to apply its system of criminal jurisprudence to a new
case.