"Twix' ten un 'leven. Donchoo be late."
"You tell Jake not to go, noways, wethout me," said Zeke, hoping by this
to delay Jake's start.
XXIV
FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED
Zeke sat restless on the fence until S'manthy's boy, exultant that his
manhood was to be recognized by his admission to the band, had gone out
of sight in the direction of the grocery. Then Zeke sprang from the
fence and started, as fast as legs could carry, along an old Indian
trail, hoping by this disused and in some places obstructed short cut
across the prairie to save a mile of the eight-miles' journey to Bob
McCord's cabin. Bob was already abed when Zeke, badly blown by his rapid
walking, knocked at the door.
"Who's there?" called Bob, emerging from his first heavy sleep.
"It's me--Zeke Tucker! Git up, quick, Bob! Jake Hogan's off at ten 'r
'leven, un it's nigh onto that a'ready." And Zeke impatiently rattled
the door of the cabin, the latch-string of which had been drawn in to
lock it.
Bob came down on the floor with a thump, and his few clothes were soon
pulled on; then he came out and stood in the fresh air, on the
"butt-cut" of a tulip-tree, or "flowering poplar," which, to compensate
for the descent of the hill-side, had been laid against the bottom log
of his cabin for a front-door step. Zeke explained to him how urgent the
case was.
[Illustration: ZEKE AND S'MANTHY'S OLDEST SON.]
"Baub! don't you go 'n' go off down to Moscow to-night," called Mrs.
McCord. "They hain't no airthly use in your botherin' yourself so much
about other folkses business. You'd orter stay'n' look arter your own
wife un childern." It was Mrs. McCord's invariable habit to object, in
her plaintive and impotent fashion, to everything her husband proposed
to do. She had not the slightest expectation that he would remain at
home in consequence of anything she might say, nor did she care that he
should; but she had a vocation to hold in check his thriftless
propensities. This she tried to do by protests uttered indiscriminately
against all his outgoings and his incomings, his downsittings and his
uprisings.
"We ain't got no hoss," said Bob, replying to Zeke, and paying no heed
to his wife. "Mrs. Grayson un Barb'ry 've gone un gone to town weth ole
Blaze, so's to be weth Tom airly in the mornin'. What on yerth to do I
don't noways see." Bob was standing with his fists in his pockets,
looking off anxiously toward the horizon.
"Can't you git Butts's?" said Zeke.
"Thunder! No! Buttses un Graysons don't hitch. Butts don't speak to none
uv'em, un he hates Tom the wust, fer throwin' rocks at his geese when
they got into the medder, un dauggin' his haugs out-uh the corn. They'd
a leetle rather Tom'd be lynched un not. By blazes! I've _got_ to git
one of Butts's hosses right straight off. Buchanan's hoss is lame, un
they hain't nary nuther one to be got this side uv Albaugh's, and that's
too fur away. You go down to the branch un wait fer me, un I'll git
Butts's little wagon. I 'low they'll be hoppin' mad 'f they fine out
what I got it fer, but I've got to git it, 'f I have to steal it. They
hain't no two ways about it."
"I don't think you'd ortuh go off that a-way, Baub," began Mrs. McCord
again. "Un me more 'n half sick. I've been feelin' kind-uh slarruppy
like fer two 'r three days. Un them air taters is to be dug, un Mely's
gone away. You 'n' Zeke Tucker 'll make a purty fist uv it a-lickin' all
Broad Run, now, wonch yeh? Wha' choo got to do weth Jake--"
But Bob did not hear the rest of it, nor was it ever uttered indeed. For
Mrs. McCord, when she found that her husband had gone, did not think it
worth while to finish her lamentations; she only drew a sigh of
complacent long-suffering and submission to fate, and went to sleep.
Hardened sinner that he was, Big Bob felt a little twinge of shame as he
made his way rapidly to Butts's house. His wife's set speech about being
more than half sick, often as he had heard it, and little as he had ever
heeded it, had now made a sufficient lodgment in his consciousness to
suggest a way out of his difficulty; but it was a way which a loafer of
the superior sort, such as Bob, might feel ashamed to take, knowing that
such a scheme as he was concocting would be an outrage on all the
sacred principles of good neighborhood--an outrage only to be justified
by military necessity. All the way to Butts's, hurried as he was, his
hands were ramming his trousers-pockets, after his fashion of groping
there for a solution of his difficulties. It was the carrying over into
other affairs the habitual research which the hunter makes for bullets,
caps, patching, or jack-knife to meet the exigencies of the forest.
Arrived at the unpainted, new frame-house, which, being two feet longer
and one foot broader than any other in the neighborhood, was the
particular pride of the Butts family, he noted that all the lights were
out, and after hesitating whether to capture the horse by stealth or by
strategy, he went to the front door and rapped. The head of the
proprietor came out of one of the lower windows with an abrupt "Who's
there?" spoken with that irritation a weary man is prone to express when
awakened from his first nap to attend to some one else's wants.
"I say, Mr. Butts," said Bob, pushing his hands harder against the
bottoms of his pockets, "kin I git the loan uv one uv your hosses un
your leetle wagon to fetch the doctor? My ole woman's purty bad; been
sick ever sence the sun was 'n 'our high, un we can't git nothin' to do
no good."
"What seems to be the matter?" said Butts, wishing to postpone an
unpleasant decision.
Bob hesitated a moment: lying is a dangerous business unless it is
carried on with circumspection. "Blamed 'f I know jest _what_ it is. I
suspicion it's the _dys_pepsy."
The name of dyspepsia was new to the country at that day, though the
complaint was ancient enough, no doubt. Just what _dys_pepsy might be
Bob did not know, but he hit on it as the vaguest term he could recall
and one that had a threatening sound. It would not have served his
purpose to have repeated Mrs. McCord's diagnosis of her own case, that
she was "feelin' kind-uh slarruppy like." "Whatever 'tis, she don't
think she kin git through till mornin' 'thout I git a doctor."
"Well, I doan know. The sorrel's lame; un I don't like to let the bay
colt go noways, he's sech a sperrited critter."
Butts drew his head in at this point to consult with Mrs. Butts as to
how he could evade lending the cherished bay colt.
"Looky h-yer, Mr. McCord," presently called Mrs. Butts, keeping her
nightcapped head well out of sight as she spoke, "you don't want no
doctor nohow." Mrs. Butts had come by virtue of superior credulity to
hold the position of neighborhood doctress, and she was not friendly to
regular physicians. "You jest take along with you a bottle of my new
medicine, 't I call the 'Scatter Misery,' It's made out-uh roots an'
yarbs, an' it's the best thing I know fer mos' every kind of complaint.
It's good insides an' outsides. You rub the Scatter Misery onto the
outsides un give her a swaller now un then insides. It'll fetch 'er
'roun' in an hour or two."
Bob felt himself fairly entangled in his own intrigue, but he gave his
great fists another push into his trousers-pockets and said:
"I'm much obleeged, Mrs. Butts, but my ole woman tole me ez I wuzn't to
come back 'thout a doctor; un ef you hain't got no critter you kin len'
me, I mus' be a-gittin' 'long down to Albaugh's mighty quick. That's a
powerful ways off, though. I wish I'd gone there straight un not come
over h-yer."
This last was uttered in a tone of plaintive disappointment as Bob
turned away, walking slowly and giving the family council time to change
its mind.
"Aw, well, Bob," called Butts, after a conference with his wife, "I
don't like to disobleege a neighbor. You kin have the bay colt; but you
must drive slow, Bob. He's a young thing un the fidgetiest critter."
Bob would drive slow. He professed that he never drove faster 'n a slow
trot, "nohows you can fix it." And he helped Butts to hitch up with no
sense of exultation, but rather with a sneaking feeling of shame.
However, nothing troubled Bob long or deeply, and when he had passed the
branch and taken in Zeke Tucker, and got out of the woods to the smooth
prairie road beyond, he forgot his scruples and tried to find out just
how much speed Butts's bay colt might have in him. Nor did he slacken
pace even when he got into the village streets; but remembering how near
it was to Jake's time, he held the horse swiftly on till he reached an
alley-way behind some village stores. Telling Tucker to tie the horse,
he got over the fence and laid hold of a rusty crowbar that he had long
kept his mind fixed on. Putting this on his shoulder, he was soon at the
jail.
"Tom!" he called, in a smothered voice, at the grated window on the east
side. But all within was as silent as it was dark. For a moment Bob
stood perplexed. Then he went to the grating at the back of the
jail--the window that opened into the passage-way at the end opposite to
the front door.
"Tom, where air you?" he called, putting his hands up on each side of
his mouth, that his words might not be heard in the street.
"In the dungeon." Tom's voice sounded remote.
Bob spent no time in deliberating, but thrust the crowbar between the
cross-bars of the iron grating. His first difficulty was similar to that
of Archimedes, he could not get a fulcrum; or, as he expressed it less
elegantly to Zeke, "he couldn't git no purchase onto the daudblasted ole
thing." But by persistently ramming the point of the crowbar against the
stone-work at the side of the window he succeeded at length in picking
out a little mortar and bracing the tip of the crowbar against a
projecting stone. He had great confidence in his own physical strength,
but the grating at first was too much for him; the wrought-iron
cross-bar of the window bent under the strain he put upon it, but it
would not loosen its hold on the masonry. At this rate it would take
more time than he could hope to have to push the bars apart enough to
admit even Zeke's thin frame, and he could not hope to bend them far
enough to let his own great body through. He therefore changed his mode
of attack. Withdrawing his crowbar from the grating, he felt for a seam
in the stones at the base of the window and then drove the point of the
bar into this over and over again, aiming as well as he could in the
dark and taking the risk of attracting the attention of some wakeful
villager by the sound of his ringing blows. At length, by drilling and
prying, he had loosened the large stone which was in some sort the key
to the difficulty. This accomplished, he made haste to insert the bar
again into the grating, bracing its point as before in the seam he had
already opened in the stone-work at the side of the window. Then, with
his feet against the wall of the jail, he crouched his great frame and
put forth the whole of his forces, thrusting his mighty strength against
the crowbar, as blind Samson in his agony tugged at the pillars of the
Philistine temple. In some colossal work of Michael Angelo's I have seen
a tremendous figure so contorted, writhing in supreme effort. The mortar
broke, some of the stones gave way at length, and one bar of the grating
was wrenched reluctant from its anchorage in the wall below. Then,
letting the crowbar fall, Bob seized the rod now loosened at one end and
tore it quite out, and then threw it from him in a kind of fury. The
process had to be repeated with each separate bar in the grating, though
the breaking up of the wall about the window made each rod come more
easily than the preceding one. When all had been removed he squeezed
through the window-opening, feet first, and felt his way down the
passage to the door of the dungeon, where Tom was anxiously waiting for
his deliverer. Bob made what a surgeon would call a "digital
examination" of the dungeon door, and found its strength to be such that
to break it down would require the rest of the night, if, indeed, there
was any hope of achieving it at all in a dark hall-way, too narrow to
admit of a free use of the crowbar.
"Dern the luck!" said Bob, pausing a moment.
"What's the matter, Bob?" asked Tom anxiously.
But Bob did not seem to hear the question. "We must git a cole-chisel,"
was all he said; and he hastened to creep back out of the broken-up
window.
"Whach yeh go'n' to do?" asked the waiting Zeke, as Bob emerged.
But Bob only said, "Come on, quick!" and started off in a swinging trot
toward the village blacksmith shop, a low, longish, wooden building,
barely visible in the darkness. He pulled at the door, but it was firmly
closed with a padlock. Then he felt his way along the side of the
building to a window-sash, which was easily taken out of its place.
"Heap uh use uh lockin' the door," he muttered, as he climbed in. "Blow
up the belluses there un see ef you kin make a light."
Zeke, who had followed his leader, pumped away on the bellows in vain,
for the fire in the forge had quite gone out, though the ashes were hot
to Zeke's touch. Both of the men set to work to find a blacksmith's
cold-chisel, feeling and fumbling all over the disorderly shop. As it
often took the smith half an hour to find this particular tool, it would
have been a marvel for two strangers to find it at all in the darkness.
"We'll have to gin up the c'nundrum," said Bob, with his hands again in
his pockets. "Didn' you say as you 'lowed the sher'f was expectin'
Jake?"
"Yes," answered Zeke. "Jake's got a kind-uv a secret urrangement weth
Plunkett's brother-in-law. They hain't to be shootin'-work on nary side,
but on'y jist a-plenty uv thunderin' loud talk fer the looks uv the
thing. Jake's to make the derndest kind uv a row, un the sher'f's to
talk about dyin' 'n 'is tracks un all that, you know. That 's some weeks
ago't the sher'f s brother-in-law fixed all that up, un Jake, he tole us
they wouldn' be no danger."
"Turn your coat wrong sides out," said Bob, turning his own. "Now tie
your han'kercher acrost yer face, so 's to kiver all below yer eyes."
When these directions had been carried out Bob climbed out of the
window, and stopped to put his hands into his pockets again and
consider.
"Whach yeh go'n' to do?" asked Zeke.
But Bob only asked, "What'll we do fer pistols'?" and with that set
himself to feeling all about the ground in front of the smith's shop,
picking up and rejecting now a bit of a dead bough from the great
sycamore under the friendly shade of which the smith did all his
horse-shoeing, now a bit of a board, and again a segment of a broken
wagon-tire, and then a section of a felloe. At last Bob came upon the
broken wheel of a farmer's wagon, leaning against the side of the shop
in waiting for repairs to its woodwork and a new tire. From this he
wrenched two spokes and gave one of them to Zeke.
"There's your pistol, Zeke. Put it jam up agin Plunkett's head un tell
him to hole still ur die. We've got to play Jake Hogan onto 'im un git
the keys. Th' ain't nary nuther way."
As Bob passed the jail in going toward the sheriff's house he took along
the crowbar. Plunkett lived in a two-story frame dwelling on the eastern
margin of the village. Bob sent Zeke to run around it and pound on the
back door and bang on every window with his wagon-spoke and his fists,
while Bob himself dealt rousing blows on the front door with his
crowbar. When Zeke had made the circuit of the house, Bob put the
crowbar under the door.
"We mustn't wait fer him to open, he'll see how few we air," he
whispered. "Prize away on this yer." Then, while Zeke lifted up on the
bar, Bob hurled his whole bull weight against the door. The staple of
the lock held fast, but the interior facing of the door-jamb was torn
from its fastenings and fell with a crash on the floor, letting the door
swing open. Not to lose the advantage of surprise, Bob and Zeke pushed
up the stairway, guided by the noise made by some one moving about. By
the time they reached Plunkett's sleeping-room the latter had struck a
light with steel and flint, and had just lighted a tallow-candle, which
was beginning to shed a feeble glimmer on the bed, the rag-carpeted
floor, the shuck-bottom chairs, and the half-dressed man, when Bob,
coming up quickly behind him, blew the light out, and seizing Plunkett
with the grip of a bear crowded him down to the floor with a smothered
oath.
"Don't kill me, boys," said the sheriff in a hoarse whisper; for this
rough usage frightened him a little, notwithstanding his good
understanding with the mob.
"Say one word un you're a dead man," said Zeke Tucker, pressing the cold
muzzle of his wagon-spoke close to the sheriff's head. These
melodramatic words were, I am glad to say, a mere plagiarism. In the
absence of anything better, Zeke repeated the speech of a highwayman in
an old-fashioned novel he had heard Mrs. Britton read on Sunday
afternoons. Then he added on his own account: "We won't have no tricks;
d' yeh h'yer?"
"They's mor' 'n forty uv us," said Bob, "un we want them air keys right
straight."
"If I had half a chance I'd ruther die than give 'em up,"--this was all
that Plunkett could remember of the defiant speech he was to have made
on this occasion,--"but there they air, at the head of my bed"; and a
cold shudder went over him as Zeke again touched him ominously with the
end of the wagon-spoke.
The sheriff's wife, though she had every assurance of the secret
friendliness of the mob, now began to weep.
"Not a word!" said Bob, who was continually scuffling his feet, in
order, like Hannibal and other great commanders, to make his forces seem
more numerous than they were. "We won't hurt you, Mrs. Plunkett, ef you
keep still; but ef you make a noise while we're gone, the boys outside
might shoot."
The woman became silent.
"Some of our men'll be left to guard your house till our business is
finished," said Bob to the sheriff, who lay limp on the floor, growing
internally angry that the Broad Run boys should not show more respect
for his dignity. "Don't you move or make any soun', fer yer life," added
Bob when he reached the top of the stairs, down which he descended with
racket enough for three or four.
As they left the house with the keys, Bob and Zeke gave orders in a low
voice to an imaginary guard at the door.
All that Tom had made out was that the irruption of Bob McCord into the
jail signified imminent danger to himself, and when Bob had gone out
again, Tom's heart failed him. He stood still, with his fingers on the
iron grating in the dungeon door. For this last night the sheriff had
taken the additional precaution of leaving Tom's manacles on when he had
locked him in the dungeon, and the lack of the free use of his hands
added much to his sense of utter helplessness in the face of deadly
peril. He could not see any light where he stood, gripping the bars and
staring into the passage-way; but he could not endure to leave this
position and go back into the darker darkness behind him. Confinement
and anxiety had sapped the physical groundwork of courage. When he heard
Bob and Zeke come past the jail on their return from the blacksmith
shop he had made out nothing but the sound of feet, whether of friends
or foes he did not know; and when the sounds died away, a horror of
deadly suspense fell upon him. All black and repulsive possibilities
became imminent probabilities in the time that he waited. Over and over
again he heard men and horses coming, and then discovered that he was
hearkening to the throbbing of his own pulse. At last he heard the key
turning in the lock of the front door, and was sure that the enemy had
arrived. It was not till Bob said, when he had got into the hall and was
trying the keys in the dungeon door, "Quick, Tom, fer God Almighty's
sake!" that his spirit, numb with terror, realized the presence of
friends.
"What's the matter?" asked Tom, his teeth chattering with reaction from
the long suspense.
"Jake Hogan'll be h-yer in less'n no time"; and with that Bob, having
got the door open, almost dragged the poor fellow out, taking time,
however, to shut the front door and lock it, and taking the keys with
him, "fer fear somebody might git in while we're away," as he said
laughing.
Once the jail was cleared, a new perplexity arose. Until this moment it
had not occurred to Bob to consider what disposal he should make of the
prisoner.
"What am I goin' to do weth you, Tom?" he demanded, when they stood
concealed in the thick obscurity under an elm-tree on the side of the
court-house opposite to the jail. "I wonder 'f you hadn' better light
out?"
"Not without Abra'm says so," answered Tom, still shivering and feeling
a strong impulse to run away in the face of all prudence.
"Looky h-yer, Tom; when I got the keys from the sher'f, I brought them
all along. They 's the big key to the jail, un the key to the dungeon.
Now, h-yer, I've got two more. It seems like as ef one uv 'em had orter
onlock the east room of the jail, un liker 'n not t' other's the
court-house key. S'pose'n I put you in there; they'll never look there
in the worl'."
"I s'pose so," said Tom, "if you think it's safe." But in his present
state he shuddered at the idea of being left alone in the dark. "If
Abra'm thinks I'd better not clear out, I'll be where I'm wanted in the
morning, and they can't say I have run off," he added.
So Tom was locked in the court-house and left to feel his way about in
the dark. He found, at length, the judge's bench, the only one with a
cushion on it, and lay down there to wait for daylight, listening with
painful attention to every sound in the streets. When at length he heard
the tramp of horses and conjectured that Jake's party were actually
looking for him, he could not overcome the unreasonable terror that
weakness and suspense had brought upon him. He groped his way up the
stairs and slunk into one of the jury rooms above for greater security.
XXV
LIKE A WOLF ON THE FOLD
Barbara, at her uncle's house, had not been able to go to bed. Tom's
fate, she knew, would be decided the next day, and whatever of hope
there might be for him was hidden in the mind of his lawyer. Mrs.
Grayson had involuntarily fallen into a slumber, and the anxious Barbara
sat by her in the darkness, wishing for the coming of the day, whose
coming was nevertheless dreadful to her. The sound of a wagon rattling
in another street startled her; she went to the window and strained her
eyes against the darkness outside of the glass. Though she could not
suspect that in the wagon was Bob McCord hurrying to the rescue of Tom,
she was yet full of vague and indistinct forebodings. She wished she
might have passed the night in the jail. A little after midnight she
thought she heard a sound as of horses' feet: again she went to the
window, but she could not see or hear anything. Then again she heard it:
there could be no mistake now; she could make out plainly the confused
thudding of many hoofs on the unpaved road. Presently, from sound
rather than from sight, she knew that a considerable troop of horsemen
were passing in front of her uncle's house. She left the room quietly,
and spoke to her uncle as she passed his door; but without waiting for
him she went out into the street and ran a little way after the
horsemen, stopping, hearkening, turning this way and that in her
indecision, and at length, after groping among the trees and stumps in
the public square, reached the jail.
Jake Hogan had sent forward two men to watch the prison, while he with
his main force surrounded Plunkett's house. The sheriff had obediently
kept his place where Bob had laid him, in the middle of the floor, until
he got into a chill. Then, as he heard no sound outside of the house,
his courage revived, and he crept back into bed.
Jake had come prepared to play the bully, according to agreement, in
order to save Plunkett's reputation for courage and fidelity, but he was
disconcerted at finding the door of the house wide open; he had not
expected that things would be made so easy. After stumbling over the
fallen door-facing, he boldly mounted the stairs with as much noise as
possible. Entering Plunkett's bedroom, he cried out in what he conceived
to be his most impressive tones:
"Gin up the keys of that ar jail, ur your time has come."
"What air you up to now?" cried the sheriff, angry at this second visit.
"You knocked me down and got the keys nigh on to an hour ago. Now what
in thunderation does this hullabaloo mean, I want to know."