Napoleon's Russian expedition was fresh in all men's minds, and took
from that memory its Russian name, which, like most other transplanted
names of the sort, was universally mispronounced. The village had been
planted in what is called an "island," that is, a grove surrounded by
prairie on every side. The early settlers in Illinois were afraid to
seat themselves far from wood. As it stands to-day the pretty town is
arranged about a large public square, neatly fenced, and with long
hitching-rails on all four sides of it. The inside of the square is
trimly kept, and is amply shaded by old forest-trees--the last survivors
of the grove that formed the "island." Moscow contains a court-house,
which is pretentious and costly, if not quite elegant, besides other
public buildings. On the streets facing this park-like square nearly all
the trade of the thriving country-town is carried on. But in the time of
Tom Grayson's imprisonment the public square was yet a rough piece of
woods, with roots and stumps still obtruding where underbrush and trees
had been cut out. There was no fence, and there were no hitching-rails.
The court-house of that day was a newish frame building, which had the
public-grounds all to itself except for the jail, on one corner of the
square. Facing the square, on the side farthest from the jail, stood the
village tavern. One half of it was of hewn logs, which marked it as
dating back to the broad-ax period of the town's growth; the other half
had been added after the saw-mill age began, and was yet innocent of
paint, as were the court-house and several other of the principal
buildings in the town. In front of the tavern was a native beech-tree,
left behind in the general destruction. Under it were some rude benches
which afforded a cool and favorite resort to the leisurely villagers.
One of the boughs of this tree served its day and generation doubly, for
besides contributing to the shadiness of the street-corner, it supported
a pendant square sign, which creaked most dolefully whenever there was
wind enough to set it swinging in its rusty iron sockets. The name of
the hotel was one common to villages of small attainments and great
hopes; the sign bore for legend in red letters: "City Hotel, R. Biggs."
To the City Hotel there came, on this first day after Tom's arrest, one
of those solitary horsemen who gave life to nearly every landscape and
mystery to nearly every novel of that generation. This horseman, after
the fashion of the age, carried his luggage in a pair of saddle-bags,
which kept time to his horse's trot by rapping against the flaps of his
saddle.
"Howdy, Cap'n Biggs," said the traveler to the landlord, who was leaning
solidly against the door-jamb and showing no sign of animation, except
by slowly and intermittently working his jaws in the manner of a
ruminating cow.
"Howdy, Abe," was the answer. "Where yeh boun' fer?"
"Perrysburg," said the new arrival, alighting and stretching the kinks
out of his long, lank limbs, the horse meanwhile putting his head
half-way to the ground and moving farther into the cool shade. Then the
horseman proceeded to disengage his saddle-bags from the stirrup-straps,
now on one side of the horse and then on the other.
"Have yer hoss fed some corn?" In asking this question Captain Biggs
with some difficulty succeeded in detaching himself from the door-post,
bringing his weight perpendicularly upon his legs; this accomplished he
sluggishly descended the three door-steps to the ground and took hold of
the bridle.
"What's this I hear about Tom Grayson, Cap'n?" said the new-comer, as he
tried to pull and wriggle his trousers-legs down to their normal place.
"Oh, he's gone 'n' shot Lockwood, like the blasted fool he is. He wuz
blowin' about it afore he lef' town las' month, but nobody reckoned it
wuz anything _but_ blow. Some trouble about k-yards an' a purty
gal--John Albaugh's gal. I s'pose Tom's got to swing fer it, 'nless you
kin kinder bewilder the jury like, an' git him off. Ole Mis' Grayson's
in the settin'-room now, a-waitin' to see you about it."
Captain Biggs lifted his face, on which was a week's growth of stubby
beard, to see how his guest would take this information. The tall,
awkward young lawyer only drew his brow to a frown and said nothing; but
turned and went into the tavern with his saddle-bags on his arm, and
walking stiffly from being so long cramped in riding. Passing through
the cool bar-room with its moist odors of mixed drinks, he crossed the
hall into the rag-carpeted sitting-room beyond.
"Oh Abra'm, I'm that glad to see you!" But here the old lady's feelings
overcame her and she could not go on.
"Howdy, Mrs. Grayson. It's too bad about Tom. How did he come to do it?"
"Lawsy, honey, he _didn't_ do it."
"You think he didn't?"
"I know he didn't. He says so himself. I've been a-waitin' here all the
mornin' to see you, an' git you to defend him."
The lawyer sat down on the wooden settee by Mrs. Grayson, and after a
little time of silence said:
"You'd better get some older man, like Blackman."
"Tom won't have Blackman; he won't have nobody but Abe Lincoln, he
says."
"But--they say the evidence is all against him; and if that's the case,
an inexperienced man like me couldn't do any good."
Mrs. Grayson looked at him piteously as she detected his reluctance.
"Abra'm, he's all the boy I've got left. Ef you'll defend him I'll give
you my farm an' make out the deed before you begin. An' that's all I've
got."
"Farm be hanged!" said Lincoln. "Do you think I don't remember your
goodness to me when I was a little wretch with my toes sticking out of
my ragged shoes! I wouldn't take a copper from you. But you're Tom's
mother, and of course you think he didn't do it. Now what if the
evidence proves that he did?"
Barbara had been sitting in one corner of the room, and Lincoln had not
observed her in the obscurity produced by the shade of the green slat
curtains. She got up and came forward. "Abra'm, do you remember me?"
"Is this little Barby?" he said, scanning her face. "You're a young
woman now, I declare."
There was a simple tenderness in his voice that showed how deeply he
felt the trouble that had befallen the Graysons.
"Well, I want to say, Abra'm," Barbara went on, "that after talking to
Tom we believe that he doesn't know anything about the shooting. Now
you'd better go and see him for yourself."
"Well, I'll tell you what, Aunt Marthy," said he, relapsing into the
familiar form of address he had been accustomed to use toward Mrs.
Grayson in his boyhood; "I'll go over and see Tom, and if he is
innocent, as you and Barby think, we'll manage to save him or know the
reason why. But I must see him alone, and he mustn't know about my talk
with you."
Lincoln got up, and laying his saddle-bags down in one corner of the
room went out immediately. First he went to inquire of Sheriff Plunkett
what was the nature of the evidence likely to be brought against Tom.
Then he got the sheriff to let him into the jail and leave him alone
with his client. Tom had been allowed to remain in the lighter apartment
since there was no fear of his escape on this day, when all the town was
agog about the murder, and people were continually coming to peer into
the jail to get a glimpse of the monster who in the darkness had shot
down one that had helped him out of a gambling scrape.
Lincoln sat down on the only stool there was in the room, while Tom sat
on a bench.
"Now, Tom," said the lawyer, fixing his penetrating gaze on the young
man's face, "you want to remember that I'm your friend and your counsel.
However proper it may be to keep your own secret in such a situation as
you are, you must tell me the whole truth, or else I cannot do you any
good. How did you come to shoot Lockwood?"
"I didn't shoot Lockwood," said Tom brusquely; "and if you don't believe
that it's no use to go on."
"Well, say I believe it then, and let's proceed. Tell me all that
happened between you and that young man."
Tom began where this story begins and told all about turning the Bible
at Albaugh's; about the gambling in Wooden & Snyder's store and how he
was led into it; about his visit to Hubbard Township to get money to pay
Lockwood, and Rachel's revelation of Lockwood's treachery in telling
Ike. Then he told of his anger and his threatening, his uncle's break
with him, and his talk with Barbara the evening before the murder; and
finally he gave a circumstantial account of all that happened to him on
the camp-ground, and of his flight and arrest.
"But," said Lincoln, who had looked closely and sometimes incredulously
at Tom's face while he spoke, "why did you take a pistol with you to the
camp-meeting?"
"I did _not_. I hadn't had a pistol in my hands for a week before the
shooting."
"But Plunkett says there's a man ready to swear that he saw you do the
shooting. They've got a pistol out of one of your drawers, and this
witness will swear that you used just such an old-fashioned weapon as
that."
"Good Lord, Abe! who would tell such an infernal lie on a fellow in my
fix? That makes my situation bad." And Tom got up and walked the
stone-paved floor in excitement. "But the bullet will show that I didn't
do it. Get hold of the bullet, and if it fits the bore of that
old-fashioned pistol I won't ask you to defend me."
"But there wasn't any bullet." Lincoln was now watching Tom's
countenance with the closest scrutiny.
"No bullet! How in creation did they kill him, then?"
"Can't you think?" He was still studying Tom's face.
"I don't know any way of killing a fellow with a pistol that's got no
bullet unless you beat his brains out with the butt of it, and I thought
they said George was shot."
"So he was. But, Tom, I've made up my mind that you're innocent. It's
going to be dreadful hard to prove it."
"But how was he killed?" demanded Tom.
"With buckshot."
Tom stood and mused a minute.
"Now tell me who says I did the shooting."
"I never heard of him before. Sovine, I believe his name is."
"Dave Sovine? W'y, he's the son of old Bill Sovine; he's the boy that
ran off four years ago, don't you remember? He's the black-leg that won
all my money. What does he want to get me hanged for? I paid him all I
owed him."
Lincoln hardly appeared to hear what Tom was saying; he sat now with his
eyes fixed on the grating, lost in thought.
"Tom," he said at length, "who was that strapping big knock-down fellow
that used to be about your place--hunter, fisherman, fist-fighter, and
all that?"
"Do you mean Bob McCord?"
"That must be the man. Big Bob, they called him. He's friendly to you,
isn't he?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Well, you have Big Bob come to see me next Tuesday at the tavern, as I
go back. I'll be there to dinner. And if you are called to the inquest,
you have only to tell the truth. We won't make any fight before the
coroner; you'll be bound over anyhow, and it's not best to show our hand
too soon."
With that he took his leave. When he got out of the prison he found
Mrs. Grayson and Barbara waiting to see him.
"Well, Aunt Marthy," he said, "it don't seem to me that your boy killed
that fellow. It's going to be hard to clear him, but he didn't do it.
I'll do my best. You must get all Tom's relations to come to the trial.
And have Big Bob McCord come to see me next Tuesday."
The influence of Tom's uncle, judiciously directed by Hiram Mason,
secured for the accused permission to remain in the light room of the
prison in the day-time with manacles on, and to sleep in the dungeon at
night without manacles. And the influence of Janet secured from Tom's
aunt the loan of the clean though ancient and well-worn bedding and
bed-linen that had been afforded him during his stay in his uncle's
house. This was set up in the dark room of the jail in place of the bed
that had been a resting-place for villains almost ever since the town
was founded.
Understanding that Tom was to be taken to the coroner's inquest that
afternoon, Hiram tried to persuade the sheriff to take him to Perrysburg
jail at night for safety; for he had no knowledge of Bob McCord's plan
for sending the mob there. But Plunkett refused this. He knew that such
a change might offend Broad Run in case it should take a notion to
enforce law in its own way, and Broad Run was an important factor in an
election for county officers. Plunkett felt himself to be a
representative sheriff. The voters of Broad Run and others of their kind
had given him his majority, and he was in his place to do their will.
Elevation to office had not spoiled him; he recognized in himself a
humble servant of the people, whose duty it was to enforce the law
whenever it did not conflict with the wishes of any considerable number
of his "constituents." To his mind it did not appear to be of much
consequence that a man who deserved hanging should receive his merited
punishment at the hands of a mob, instead of suffering death according
to the forms of law, after a few weeks or months of delay. But he was
too cautious to reveal to Mason the true state of his mind; he only
urged that the removal of Tom to Perrysburg would be an act of timidity
that might promote the formation of a mob while it would not put Tom out
of their reach; and this Mason could not deny.
XVI
THE CORONER'S INQUEST
The murder of George Lockwood furnished a powerful counter-excitement,
which quite broke the continuity of religious feeling, and lacked little
of completely breaking up the camp-meeting. Hundreds of men and women
thronged about the place of the shooting and discussed all the probable
and possible details of the affair, of which several versions were
already current. The coroner ordered the body removed to a large barn in
the neighborhood; whereupon the people rushed thither to get a sight of
the dead man, for there is no source of excitement so highly prized by
the vulgar as the ghastly. At 3 in the afternoon the barn was crowded.
The people jostled one another closely upon the wide threshing-floor,
and the wheat-mow alongside contained, among others, at least twenty
women whose appetite for the horrible had led them to elbow their way
early to this commanding situation. The hay-mow at the other end of the
floor was full of men and boys, and the high girders were occupied by
curious spectators, perched like rows of chimney-swifts at the time of
autumnal flitting. More adventurous youth had managed to climb even into
the dizzy collar-beams under the comb of the barn, to the dismay of the
mason-swallows whose young were sheltered in adobe houses attached to
the rafters. There were heads, and pendant legs, and foreshortened arms
enough in the upper part of the barn to suggest a ceiling-fresco of the
Last Judgment by an old Italian master. Other curious people had crowded
into the horse stables below the wheat-mow, and were peering over the
manger into the threshing-floor and intermingling their heads with those
of the beasts of the stall, much as the aforementioned old Italian
painters mix up brute and human faces in their Nativity pieces. The
crowd upon the floor itself stretched out of the wide-open double doors
on each hand, beyond which there was a surging mass of people blindly
gravitating toward the center of excitement, though all the proceedings
were invisible and inaudible to them.
On two boards supported by kegs and boxes lay the lifeless body of
Lockwood. The pitiful sight of the pallid face and the eyes sunken in
their sockets exasperated the spectators. Between the body and the
hay-mow the coroner took his place on the only chair in the barn; at the
opposite side of the corpse the jury was seated on improvised benches.
Markham, the sheriff's deputy, assisted by a constable, kept back the
press, whose centripetal force threatened at every movement to overwhelm
the innocent jurymen.
As a matter of course, the first witness sworn was a doctor. Coroners
begin at the beginning by first proving that the deceased is duly dead,
and so within their jurisdiction; and by finding out by just what means
the knife, rope, poison, or pistol ball severed the thread of existence.
The human passion for completeness is as much prone to show itself in
law proceedings as in art performances; coroners' inquests like to go
down to the physiological principles that underlie the great fact of
practical importance, and to inquire what was the name and function of
the particular artery the severance of which put an end to consciousness
in a set of ganglia which, with their complicated adjuncts, constitute
what we call a man. It was in this case settled very promptly that the
unfortunate deceased came to his death by a charge of buckshot. I shall
not entertain the reader with the anatomical particulars, although these
proved to be of the most pungent interest to the auditory at the
inquest, and were scientifically expounded in every cross-roads grocery
in the county for months afterward. There are old men in Illinois who
haven't got done explaining the manner of it yet. But the important
thing was accomplished when the coroner and his jury were convinced that
the man was not only apparently, but scientifically, and therefore
legally, dead; thus a basis was laid for the subsequent proceedings.
It is one of the strong points of a coroner that he knows nothing about
what is held to be competent testimony,--nothing of the strict laws of
relevancy and irrelevancy. He therefore goes to work to find out the
truth in any way that seems good to him, without being balked by that
vast network of regulations which are sure to embarrass the best
endeavors of a more learned court. Markham was sworn immediately after
the doctor had finished. It was his business to identify Tom's pistol. I
fancy a lawyer might have insisted that no foundation had been laid for
this testimony; but to the coroner it seemed the most orderly way,
immediately after proving that Lockwood had been killed, to show the
weapon with which he might have been killed. Markham swore to finding
this pistol in Tom's room; and the ocular proof of the existence of such
a weapon, in juxtaposition with the ghastly evidence before them of
Lockwood's violent death, went far to establish Tom's guilt in the minds
of the people. Then other witnesses swore to Tom's presence on the
camp-ground; and two young men from Moscow had heard him threaten, some
weeks before, that he would shoot George Lockwood.
It was just when the evidence of these two was finished that the people
on the threshold of the south door of the barn began to sway to and fro
in a sort of premonitory wave-motion, for outside of the door Sheriff
Plunkett, having just arrived from Moscow with Tom Grayson, was battling
with the condensed crowd in an endeavor to reach the presence of the
coroner.
"You can't git through, Sher'f," said one man. "This crowd's so thick
you could bore a nauger into it."
But the sheriff's progress was aided by the interest of the people in
Tom. They could not resist turning about to look at him, and every
movement displaced some human molecules; so that Plunkett, aided by the
respect shown to him as an officer, was able to push a little farther in
at every budge. But the people were not content with looking at Tom.
"You've got to swing fer it, you young rascal," said one man as Tom
passed.
"Coward to shoot a man in the dark!" muttered another.
And ever as in this slow progress Tom came nearer to the center he felt
the breath of the mob to be hotter. When he got within the door there
was a confused rustle among the people on the threshing-floor, a murmur
from those who jostled one another in the hay-mows, and a sound of
indignation from the people seated on cross-beams and clinging to
girders; mutterings even came down from those lodged like overhanging
angels in the dizzy collar-beams, fast by the barn-swallows' nests. Such
excited crowds are choruses who wait for some one to give them the key;
the pitch of the first resolute voice determines the drift of feeling.
If somebody had called out at this moment for fair play, the solvent
feeling of the crowd might have crystallized about this one. But
indignation got tongue first.
"Hang him!" The words came from the corner of the threshing-floor
farthest from the coroner, and in an instant the tide of feeling ran
swiftly to that side. Tom recognized the harsh voice, and realized his
danger in perceiving that the resentful Jake Hogan was leading those who
sought to lynch him.
When the sheriff, with Grayson, had penetrated to the neighborhood of
the coroner, the inquest was continued by calling David Sovine. This
young man, with stylish trousers strapped down to patent-leather shoes,
came forward chewing tobacco and affecting a self-confident swagger. He
took the oath nonchalantly.
"Tell us what you know of the murder of George Lockwood," said the
coroner.
"Well, me an' George had been together, an' we parted. He was goin'
to-_wards_ his horse an' me to-_wards_ the camp-meetin'. I was about
twenty foot, or maybe twenty-five foot, away from 'im when along come
Tom Grayson an' says, says he, 'I'm boun' to git even with you wunst fer
all.' I looked aroun', an' Tom was aimin' his pistol. George Lockwood
says, says he, 'Don't shoot me, Tom'; but Tom he up an' fired, an'
George jist keeled over like, an' never said another word. Tom run off
as fast as his legs could carry him. I run up to George, an' he was
layin' there dead 's a door-nail. Then the crowd come a-runnin', an'
that's about all I know about it."
"D' you remember the pistol?"
"Yes."
"Was it like this?"
"Yes; an ole-fashioned big bore single-barrel like that, I should say."
"That'll do. You can stand aside," said the coroner.
"Hang him!" cried Jake Hogan; and there were other cries that showed how
swiftly and terribly the current was setting in the direction indicated
by Jake.
Tom Grayson was sworn.
"Now," said the coroner, "you don't have to criminate yourself. If you
cannot answer any question asked of you without criminating you, you can
decline to give an answer."
For how many ages have Anglo-Saxons made their criminal law ridiculous
by this rule!
"Now," the coroner went on, "tell us just what you know about the
shooting at the camp-meeting."
"I don't know anything at all about it," said Tom with agitation. "I
haven't seen George Lockwood since I quarreled with him in Moscow till I
saw him here." And he pointed with a trembling finger to the stark form
of the man he had hated.
"Lie!" cried Hogan. The coroner called, "Order!"
"Aw!" said one of the women in the wheat-mow. "To think he could have
the impedence to hole up his head an' talk that away un the corpse right
there afore his eyes!"
"Do you know that pistol?" asked the coroner.
Tom took it up and looked at some marks on the butt of it.
"It's mine," he said.
"Did you have it at the camp-meeting?"
"No, nor any other."
"You are not obliged to criminate yourself," said the coroner again;
"but didn't you see Lockwood killed?"
"No," said Tom. "It's all a lie that Dave Sovine swore to, and he knows
it. I wasn't on that part of the ground."
"Hang him!" interjected Hogan.
"The bah-y is awful plucky, upon me sowl," said Magill, who was standing
on a plow-beam in order to see over the heads of the crowd. "It would be
a pity to hang a man of such good stuff."
"The bare-faced villain!" growled the man next to him, and the
unfavorable impression evidently had sway with the crowd. When people
have once made up their mind as to how a thing has happened, they do not
like to have their fixed notions disturbed. Tom's heart sank; he could
see that the chance for his getting back to the jail alive was growing
smaller. Hiram Mason had attached himself to Tom and the sheriff, and
had elbowed his way to the front in their wake; the people, supposing
that he had some official function, made way for him. He now got the ear
of the sheriff.
"If you don't get Tom away at once he'll be lynched," he said.
"I know it; but I don't know what to do," said Plunkett. "If I make any
move, I'll fetch the crowd down on Tom."
"Get him down into the cow-stable under the barn, and let Markham take
him off. You stay here and they won't suspect that he's gone."
There was something pitiable about the sheriff's inability to make a
decision at a critical moment. He looked at the angry crowd, who were
paying little attention to the testimony of unimportant witnesses, and
he looked at the coroner. He didn't like to bear the responsibility of
having a prisoner taken from his hands; still more he disliked to offend
so many voters.
"Settle it with Markham and the coroner," he said, sneaking out of the
decision he could not bring himself to make.
"Mr. Markham," whispered Hiram, "the sheriff wants you and me to get Tom
off. I'll get the horses ready, and you and Tom are to come out through
the cow-stable. Speak to the coroner about it, and don't let the crowd
see it. If we don't get him away before this thing breaks up he'll never
get to town alive."
"All right," said Markham. "I'll be in the cow-stable with Tom when
you're ready."
Jake Hogan had already gone out to muster his men, and Hiram was very
impatient at the long time it took him to work his way outward. He was a
little annoyed when Magill, getting down from the plow-beam, stopped him
to whisper:
"I say, you're Tom's friend. Now what can I do for the bah-y? I s'pose
he's guilty, but I don't want to see such a bowld gintleman as he is
lynched by such a set of howlin' blackguards as these."
"Go over there and stand in front of Tom, so that the people won't see
him and Markham when they get down into the cow-stable."