passive happiness which she did not care to show to this crowd, whose
late unfriendly manifestations toward Tom she could not yet quite
forgive. Hardly conscious of what was passing around her, she did not
observe that her mother had presently let go her hold on Tom, and that
Tom had come near and was standing in front of her. Her natural reserve
made her wish to avoid a scene in public, but there are times when
natural reserve is not a sufficient barrier. Tom gently put his hand on
her shoulder and said "Barb," then all sense of the presence of others
was obliterated in an instant. The only fact that she took note of was
that her brother was there before her with unmanacled hands, free to go
where he listed and forever delivered from the danger that had hung over
him so imminently. Of what she did you must not expect a description;
embraces and kisses of joy would seem hysterical if set down here in
black and white for readers of our time, who like the color washed out
of a human passion before it is offered to them. No! no! let us turn
away--we do not like such things. But those hearty Illinois folk who
looked on that scene between Barbara and Tom, and whose quick sympathies
made them part of it, did not feel the slightest disapproval when they
saw the faithful sister put her arms about Tom's neck; and every one of
her kisses they seconded with clapping of hands and cheers, and some of
the people were even foolish enough to weep for sympathy.
XXVIII
FREE
The lawyers presently congratulated Lincoln, Barbara tried to thank him,
and Judge Watkins felt that Impartial Justice herself, as represented in
his own person, could afford to praise the young man for his conduct of
the case.
"Abr'am," said Mrs. Grayson, "d' yeh know I kind uv lost confidence in
you when you sot there so long without doin' _any_thing." Then, after a
moment of pause: "Abr'am, I'm thinkin' I'd ort to deed you my farm.
You've 'arned it, my son; the good Lord A'mighty knows you have."
"I'll never take one cent, Aunt Marthy--not a single red cent"; and the
lawyer turned away to grasp Tom's hand. But the poor fellow who had so
recently felt the halter about his neck could not yet speak his
gratitude. "Tom here," said Lincoln, "will be a help in your old days,
Aunt Marthy, and then I'll be paid a hundred times. You see it'll tickle
me to think that when you talk about this you'll say: 'That's the same
Abe Lincoln that I used to knit stockings for when he was a poor little
fellow, with his bare toes sticking out of ragged shoes in the snow.'"
Mrs. Grayson tried to say something more, but she could not.
Tom got his speech at length, when he saw the gigantesque form and big
laughing red face of Bob McCord approaching him.
"Bob!" he said, "you dear old Bob! God A'mighty bless you, old fellow."
"I'm that tickled," said Bob, rocking to and fro with amusement. "Tom,
you'd orto 'a' seed Jake Hogan's face. I watched it closte. Go to
thunder! How it did git mixed about the time you wuz let out! I'm
a-goin' to find 'im un see how he feels agin this time"; and Bob let go
of Tom's hand and moved off through the crowd to look for Jake.
Tom took mechanically all the congratulations offered to him. Rachel
came with the rest; there were some traces of tears about her long
lashes as she beamed on Tom the full effulgence of her beauty and
friendliness. Tom gave a little start when he saw her; then he took her
hand, as he did that of the others, in a half-unconscious way. He was
everybody's hero in the reaction of feeling, but he had been so near to
the gallows within an hour that he had difficulty yet in appreciating
the change.
"You'll come back into the office again, won't you, Tom?" said Blackman,
in a spurt of good feeling.
"I don't know, Mr. Blackman. I must go home and rest, and be sure I'm
alive, before I know what I shall do."
Tom's uncle had been utterly surprised by the turn affairs had taken,
for he had never really doubted Tom's guilt. Now he was, for the first
time, almost effusive; he gave himself credit that he had stood by his
nephew.
"We'd like to have you back, Tom," he said; "and you'd be a general
favorite now."
"I want to go home first, Uncle Tom, and get the place out of debt, so
mother and Barb'll be easy in their minds. Then I don't know what I
_shall_ do. I don't feel as if I could ever come to town again without
fetching mother with me. But I can't tell; I want to get out of this
town; I hate the very sight of it. Come, Barb; do let's get off. Where's
the horse? I want to get home, where I won't see any more of this crowd,
and where I can be alone with you and mother."
Before they had made their way to the front door of the court-house the
multitude outside had got firm hold of the fact of Tom's acquittal and
the manner of it, and when he appeared they set up a shout; then there
were cheers and more cheers. But Tom only looked worried, and sought to
extricate himself from the people who followed him. At length he managed
to get away from the last of them.
"You haven't ate anything to-day," said Janet, who clung to his hand and
danced along by his side. "Come to our house to supper. I expect we'll
have warm biscuits and honey."
"You dear little body!" said Tom. "I can't stop for supper to-night,
Janet; I must go home with mother. I want to get out of the ugly town.
I'll come and see you sometimes, and I'll have you out at the farm lots
of times." He stopped to put his pale, trembling hand under her pretty
chin; he turned her face up to his, he stooped and kissed her. But no
entreaty could prevail on him to delay his departure. Not even the
biscuits and honey on which Janet insisted. Hiram Mason helped him to
hitch up old Blaze-face to the wagon. Then Tom turned to Hiram and
grasped both his arms.
"You're going with us," he said abruptly.
"Not to-night, Tom. I'll come in a few days, when I've finished my
writing in the clerk's office. I'll stop on my way home."
"I want to thank you, but I can't; confound it," said Tom.
"Never mind, Tom; I'm almost happier than you are."
"I'm not exactly happy, Mason," said Tom; "I've got that plaguey feeling
of a rope around my neck yet. I can't get rid of it here in Moscow.
Maybe out at the farm I shall be able to shake it off. Janet, won't you
run into the house and tell mother and Barbara to come out quick--I want
to get away."
Tom had expected that Bob McCord would take a place in the wagon, but
Bob was not so modest as to forego a public triumph. He first went and
recovered the wagon-spoke from beneath the court-house steps, where he
had hidden it the night before. This he put into the baggy part of his
"wamus," or hunting-jacket--the part above the belt into which he had
often thrust prairie-chickens when he had no game-bag. Then he contrived
to encounter Jake Hogan in the very thick of the crowd.
"O Jake!" he called, "what's the price uh rope? How's the hangin'
business a-gittin' along these days? Doin' well at it, ain't yeh?"
"Wha' joo mean?" asked Jake, as he half turned about and regarded Bob
with big eyes.
"Seems like's ef you'd ort to be'n ole han' by this time, Jake. You sot
the time fer Tom's funeral three deffer'nt nights: wunst you wuz a-goin'
to have it over't Perrysburg, un wunst the Sunday night that Pete
Markham throwed you off the track weth that air yarn about a wall-eyed
man weth red whiskers, un wunst ag'in las' night. Ev'ry time you sot it
they wuz some sort uv a hitch; it didn't seem to come off rightly.
S'pose un you try yer hand on Dave Sovine awhile. They's luck in a
change."
"I hain't had no han' in no hangin's nor nuthin' uh that sort," snarled
Jake.
"_You_ hain't? Jest you go un tell that out on Broad Run, sonny. Looky
h-yer, Jake. I've got the evidence agin you, un ef you _dare_ me I'll go
afore the gran' jury weth it. I jest dare you to dare me, _ef_ you
dare."
But Jake did not dare to dare him. He only moved slowly away toward his
horse, the excited crowd surging after him, to his disgust.
"Looky h-yer, Jake," Bob went on, following his retreat. "I want to gin
you some _ad_vice as a well-wishin' friend un feller-citizen. Barb'ry
knowed your v'ice las' night, un Barb'ry Grayson hain't the sort uv a
gal to stan' the sort uv foolin' 't you've been a-doin' about Tom."
"Aw, you shet up yer jaw, now wonchoo?" said Jake.
"I say, Jake," said McCord, still pursuing the crest-fallen leader of
Broad Run, while the crowd moved about Big Bob as a storm center. "I say
there, Jake; liker 'n not Barb'ry'll stay in town to-night un go afore
the gran' jury to-morry. Now ef I wuz you I'd cl'ar the county this very
_i_dentical night. Your ornery lantern-jawed face wouldn' look half's
han'some as Tom's in that air box in front uv the sher'f."
"You shet up!" said Jake.
"Come un shet me up, wonch you?" said Bob, rubbing his hands and
laughing.
Jake had reached his horse now, and without another word he mounted and
rode away. But Bob kept walking about with his fists in his pockets, his
big elbows protruding, and his face radiant with mischief until Sheriff
Plunkett came out of the court-house.
"I say, Sher'f," he called, "how many men'd you say they wuz in that air
fust mob?"
"Nigh onto forty, I should think," said Plunkett; "but of course I can't
just exactly say." And he walked away, not liking to be catechised.
There was something mysterious about that mob, and he was afraid there
might be something that would count in the next election.
"They had pistols, didn't they?" Bob continued, following him.
"Yes, to be sure," said Plunkett, pausing irresolutely.
"Now looky h-yer, Sher'f; I know sumpin about that air mob. They wuzn't
but jest on'y two men in the whole thing. I don't say who they _wuz_";
and here Bob looked about on the crowd, which showed unmistakable signs
of its relish for this revelation.
"Un as fer pistols, they did have 'em. I've got one of 'em h-yer." Bob
here pulled the wagon-spoke from the depths of his hunting-shirt.
"That's one of the identical hoss-pistols that wuz p'inted at your head
las' night. Felt kind-uh cold un creepy like, didn't it now, Hank
Plunkett, when its muzzle was agin yer head, un it cocked, besides?
Ha-a! ha!"
The crowd jeered and joined in Bob's wild merriment.
"I'll have you arrested," said the sheriff severely. "You've confessed
enough now to make the grand jury indict you."
"Fer what? Fer savin' the life uv a innercent man? That'd be a purty
howdy-do, now wouldn't it? Un it would be a lovely story to tell at my
trial, that the sher'f uv this yere county gin up his keys to two men,
_two lonesome men weth on'y wagon-spokes_! He-e! An' the wagon-spokes
cocked! A wagon-spoke's a mighty bad thing when it does go off,
especially ef it's loadened with buckshot."
Plunkett came close to McCord, and said in an undertone loud enough to
be heard by others: "Ah, Bob, I knowed it wuz your voice, un I knowed
your grip. They ain't any other man in this county that can put me down
the way you did las' night. But don't you tell Jake ur any of his crowd
about it"; and he winked knowingly at Bob.
"Aw, go to thunder, now!" said Bob, speaking loudly and not to be
cajoled into giving up his fun. "Sher'f, you can't come no gum games on
_me_. By jeementley crickets, you wuz skeered, un that's all they is
about it. You wilted so 't I wuz afeerd you'd clean faint away afore I
could git out uv yeh where the keys wuz. Why didn't you hide Tom
summers? You wuz afeerd Broad Run'd vote agin you, un you as good as
tole Jake Hogan ut you wouldn' make no trouble when he come to lynch
Tom."
"No, I didn't; I didn't have anything to say to Jake."
"Ef you take my case afore the gran' jury un I'm tried, I'll prove it on
yeh. Now, Hank Plunkett, they's two things that'll never happen." Here
Bob smote his right fist into his left palm. "One is 't you'll ever
fetch my case afore the gran' jury. That's as shore's you're born. T'
other is that you'll ever be elected ag'in! Wha'd joo turn off Pete
Markham fer? Fer tryin' to save Tom, un to please Broad Run. Now you're
come up weth, ole hoss. Markham'll be the nex' sher'f. You jest cut a
notch in a stick to remember't Big Bob McCord tole you so. Ef 't hadn'
been fer me 'n' Abe Lincoln you 'n' Jake, 'twext and 'tween yeh, 'd 'a'
hung the wrong feller. Now I jest want to see you fetch me afore the
court wunst. Ef you pester me too much, I'm derned 'f I don't go thar on
m' own hook."
"You've been drinking, Bob," said Plunkett, as he hurried away; but the
people evidently sided with McCord, whose exploit of mobbing the sheriff
almost single-handed had made him more than ever the champion of the
county.
That night Jake Hogan, afraid of arrest, succeeded in trading his cabin,
with the front door still unhinged, and his little patch of rugged
ground for a one-horse wagon and some provisions. Over the wagon he
stretched his only two bed-sheets of unbleached domestic for covering.
Before noon the next day, he had passed safely out of the county. The
raw-boned horse, the rickety wagon, the impoverished and unwilling cow
tied behind, the two yellow mongrel pups between the wagon-wheels, and
the frowsy-headed wife alongside of him were token enough to every
experienced eye that here was a poor whitey on his travels. To all
inquiries regarding his destination, Jake returned:
"I'm boun' fer _Mes_souri. Yeh see they hain't no kind of a chance fer a
poor man in this yer daudrautted Eelinoys country."
Once an example of migration had been set, his neighbors grew restless
also, and in a year or two nearly all of them had obeyed their
hereditary instinct and followed him to Pike County in Missouri. The
most of the Broad Run neighborhood is now included in a great grazing
farm; here a few logs, there some tumble-down ruins of a stick-chimney,
and in another place a rough stone hearth, only remain to indicate the
resting-place for a few years of a half-nomadic clan, whose members or
their descendants are by this time engaged, probably, in helping to rid
the Pacific coast of its unchristian Chinese.
XXIX
THE CLOSE OF A CAREER
Dave Sovine's partial confession, which had served to acquit Tom, was
sufficient at the next term of the court to condemn him, for no plea of
accidental shooting could save him after he had tried to escape at the
expense of another man's life. During his trial the motive for shooting
Lockwood remained an inexplicable mystery. But when once Dave was
convinced that his execution was inevitable and there was an end to all
the delights of deviltry, he proceeded to play the only card remaining
in his hand, and to euchre Justice on her own deal. Like other murderers
of his kind he became religious, and nothing could be more encouraging
to criminals than the clearness and fervor of his religious experience,
and his absolute certainty of the rewards of paradise. His superiority
in wickedness had made him the hero of all the green goslings of the
village; his tardy conversion and shining professions made him an object
of philanthropic interest to sentimental people and gave him the
consolations of conspicuity to the last.
It was during this lurid sunset period of his unnecessary existence that
Dave made confessions. These were not always consistent one with
another; the capacity for simple and direct truth-telling is a talent
denied to men of Sovine's stamp, nor can it be developed in a brief
season of penitence. It is quite probable that Sovine failed to state
the exact truth even when narrating his religious experiences. But by a
comparison of his stories, with some elimination of contradictory
elements, the main facts regarding the death of George Lockwood were
made out with passable clearness. Being of a thrifty turn of mind,
Lockwood had, by a series of careful observations, detected one of the
principal tricks employed by Dave to win the money of the unwary. It had
been Lockwood's purpose to play the trick back on Dave at some favorable
opportunity, but this he found quite impossible. To bring himself to
Dave's proficiency in manipulation no end of assiduous practice would be
needful. There remained one other way in which he might utilize his
discovery. It was an established rule in that part of the country that
he who detected his opponent in the very act of cheating at cards might
carry off the stakes.
When Lockwood went to the camp-meeting he put into his pocket a bit of
candle, in order to have a game with Dave; and when on encountering him
Dave proposed the game, the two went out into the woods, remote from the
meeting, Lockwood lighted his candle and they sat down on a log to play.
Lockwood won at first and doubled the stakes at every game, until Dave,
seeing that his pocket-money was running short, and the candle fast
wasting in the breezes, concluded to sweep in the stakes with his
favorite trick. George Lockwood exposed the cheat at the very instant,
and put the stakes in his pocket. But Dave had received his education in
its higher branches in the South-west of half a century ago, and he had
no notion of suffering himself to be bankrupted so easily. He drew his
pistol and demanded the stakes, following Lockwood with reiterated
threats, until, in a moment of exasperation, he shot him. A crowd came
quickly at the sound of the pistol, and Dave had the shrewdness not to
run away and not to attempt to take any money from George Lockwood's
person. Remembering Tom Grayson's threats, he declared, with his usual
alertness in mendacity, that he had seen Grayson do the shooting, and
thus diverted attention from himself.
He had no further thought at the time than to get out of a present
difficulty; it was his purpose to leave the country before the trial
should come on. But he found himself watched, and he imagined that he
was suspected. He saw no chance to move without making sure of his own
arrest; he became alarmed and unfitted for decision by the sense of his
peril; as the trial approached, his nerves, shaken by dissipations, were
unstrung by the debate within him. He saw ghosts at night and his sleep
almost entirely forsook him. This horror of a doom that seemed
perpetually to hang over him was greatly enhanced by the
cross-examination to which he was subjected; from the first he
misdoubted that Lincoln had penetrated his whole secret and possessed
the means of making it known. And when he heard himself charged publicly
with the murder and as publicly arrested, he believed that some evidence
against him had been found; he did not draw the line between the charge
and the proof, and the half confession escaped him in the first
breakdown produced by sudden despair.
But at the last he spoke edifyingly from the scaffold, and died with as
much composure and more self-complacency than Tom would have shown had
he fallen a victim to Dave's rascality. What becomes of such men in
another world is none of my business. But I am rather pleased to have
them depart, be it to paradise, or purgatory, or limbo, or any other
compartment of the world of spirits. In some moods I could even wish
them a prosperous voyage to the Gehenna of our forefathers, now somewhat
obsolescent, if only they would begone and cease to vex this
rogue-ridden little world of ours.
XXX
TOM AND RACHEL
When Tom rode home from the trial with his mother and Barbara, his
emotions were not just what one might expect; the events of the day and
the tremendous strain on his nerves had benumbed him. He was only
conscious that it gave him a great pleasure to leave the village behind,
and to get once more upon the open prairie, which was glorified by the
tints and shadows of the setting sun. The fields of maize, with their
tassels growing brown and already too ripe and stiff to wave freely, and
with their long blades becoming harsh and dry, so that the summer rustle
had changed to a characteristic autumnal rattling, seemed to greet him
like old friends who had visibly aged in his absence. Tom found his
mind, from sheer strain and weariness, fixing itself on unimportant
things; he noted that the corn-silk which protruded from the shucks was
black, and that the shucks themselves were taking on that sear look
which is the sure token of the ripeness of the ear within the envelope.
Now and then he marked an ear that had grown so long as to push its
nose of cob quite beyond the envelope. The stretches of prairie grass
showed a mixture of green and brown; the September rains had freshened a
part of the herbage, giving it a new verdure, but the riper stalks and
blades had maintained their neutral colors. These things interested Tom
in a general way, as marking the peaceful changes that had taken place
in the familiar face of nature during his period of incarceration. What
he felt in regarding these trifles was simply that he was alive and once
more free to go where he pleased. He said little, and replied to the
remarks of his mother and Barbara briefly, and he drove old Blaze-face
at a speed quite unbecoming a horse at his time of life. The people whom
he passed cheered him, or called out their well-meant congratulation, or
their bitter remarks about Dave Sovine, but Tom on his part was not
demonstrative; he even drove past Rachel Albaugh and her brother Ike
with only a nod of recognition. To any remark of his mother and Barbara
about Dave's villainy, and to any allusion to the case, he returned the
briefest answers, giving the impression that he wished to get mentally
as well as physically away from the subject. When he got home he asked
for an old-fashioned country hoe-cake for supper, and he would have the
table set out on the kitchen porch; he said it seemed so delightful to
be permitted to go out-of-doors again. After supper he turned old Blaze
into the pasture, with a notion that he too might prefer his liberty.
In reflecting on the events of the day, Barbara remembered with pleasure
that Rachel had congratulated Tom. It made his vindication complete that
the young woman who had refused his attentions when he was accused of
nothing worse than foolish gambling had now taken pains to show her
good-will in public. But when the question of a possible renewal of the
relations between Tom and his old sweetheart came up in Barbara's mind,
there was always a doubt. Not that there was anything objectionable
about Rachel Albaugh. Barbara said to her mother over and over again, in
the days that followed Tom's acquittal, that there was nothing against
Rachel. If Rachel was not very industrious she was certainly
"easy-tempered." In her favor it could be said that she had a beautiful
face, and that she would be joint heiress with her brother to a large
and well-improved prairie farm, to say nothing of her father's tract of
timber-land.
After a while Barbara came to wish that Tom's old affection for Rachel
might be kindled again. She did not like to see him so changed. He
plodded incessantly at farm work, and he seemed to have lost his relish
for society. If any one came to the house, he managed to have business
abroad. He was not precisely gloomy, but the change in him was so marked
that it made his sister unhappy.
"Why don't you go to see Rachel?" she asked, a week after the trial.
Barbara was straining her eyes down the road, as she often did in those
days. "Rachel would be glad to see you again, Tom, like as not."
"Maybe she would," answered Tom, as he picked up the pail and started
to the spring for water by way of cutting off all further talk on the
question.
The days went by without Tom's showing by any sign that he cared to see
Rachel, and to Barbara's grief the days went by without Hiram Mason's
promised arrival at the Graysons'. But there came presently a note from
Hiram to Barbara, saying that he had been detained by the necessity he
was under of finishing Magill's writing, and by the difficulty he found
in getting his pay from the easy-going clerk for what he had done. But
he hoped to stop on his way home in three or four days. This note was
brought from Moscow by Bob McCord, who also brought Janet. The child had
teased her father into letting her come out in Aunt Martha's wagon with
Bob, whom she had seen driving past the house on his way in.
Janet spent her time in the country wholly with Tom. She followed him
afield, she climbed with him into the barn lofts, she sat on the back of
old Blaze when Tom led him to water, she went into the forest when Tom
went to fell trees for fire-wood, she helped him to pick apples, and she
was as happy in all this as she would have been in the Elysian Fields.
"Cousin Tom," she said, the day after her arrival, as she leaned out of
the high, open window of the hay-loft, "yonder's a lady getting down on
the horse-block at the house."
Tom climbed up from the threshing-floor to the mow, and, standing well
back out of sight in the gloom of the loft, he recognized Rachel
Albaugh's horse. Then he went back again to his wheat-fanning on the
threshing-floor.