I
THE sheriff stopped on the steps of the court-house, pushed his straw
hat back from his forehead, moved his eyeglasses up a little closer
to his fat face, and began to contemplate the limits of his official
jurisdiction, with the air of one about to deduce a law.
The little county seat on Tug River slept in a pocket. Behind it and
on every side except the river were great mountains, half-hidden by a
gigantic cloak of fog. On the opposite side, from the great coal plants
of the Norfolk and Western Railroad a counter-canopy of smoke arose,
dense and voluminous, and stretched itself like a black hand out over
the town and across to the fog of the mountain. Man, it seemed, had
conspired with nature to cover up and hide the town of Welch.
“Strange,” drawled the sheriff, “strange, that a white man should be
willing to leave a paradise like this, and with river water in his
stomach too.” Then he chuckled comfortably.
The sheriff of the county of McDowell was all right. He represented the
entire machinery of the law obtaining south of Tug River, and he carried
the momentous responsibility with the languid grace of a bank clerk at a
charity german.
The sheriff was a Virginian. But, marvel of marvels, he was a Virginian
without a title. He was plain W. M. Carter. The statement is not quite
accurate. Among the boys he was “White” Carter. But he was no “colonel”
and no “major,” and he gloried in the distinction and guarded it well.
The sheriff was a comfortably fat man and most genial. His eyes were
round, blue, and dreamy, and he never hurried. He was never abrupt or
a jarring element. He slipped easily into any position and filled it
up without a ripple, as water slips in and fills up the outlines of a
vessel.
Still the sheriff was all right. When he looked out of his dreamy blue
eyes through his rimless nose glasses at a negro miner who had used his
razor as an adjunct to an argument, and mildly requested the negro to
accompany him to the confines of the county jail, it was as certain as
the advent of death that the negro would obey, and obey without comment.
And when the sheriff mounted his “murky dun” horse and passed up into
the mountains for the purpose of inducing a moonshiner to come down
to civilization and submit his rights to the decision of a judicial
tribunal, it was a matter of familiar history that the moonshiner always
came.
To the inquiring stranger, no man seemed a native of McDowell.
This impression arose from the fact that the stranger adhered to the
railroad and the coal towns which sprang up in its wake, and in these
every man came from somewhere. The railroad had brought in the coal
companies, and the coal companies had brought in the negroes, and thus
towns sprang into existence, and the usual rough, expeditious methods
of civilization began. Then came the politician and the adventurer, and
mixed in merrily, and from that time forth the county of McDowell was
industrial and Republican, and everything “went.” But a few years back,
before the section hands on the Norfolk and Western Railroad cut through
from the county of Mercer, there was a population in McDowell that was
not Republican, and that did not “go.” They were long-limbed, indolent,
and “handy men” in a fight. They made corn whiskey when they pleased,
and voted the Democratic ticket when they saw fit, and accounted to
no one. The revenue officer came, and looked up at the great mountains
covered with the giant oaks of a century, concluded that the laws were
not being violated, and so reported to the Government. It was vastly
more comfortable than going up into these same mountains not to come
down at all, or maybe to come down with a squirrel bullet under the
ribs. In his day and generation the revenue officer was a wise man.
Here the citizen was born as it happened, lived as he could, and died
as the necessity arose, and the outside world neither knew nor cared nor
concerned itself with it. These were not bad people. Morally they were
as good as the sun warmed. Their life bred no shams. If they loved each
other, they lived together and were happy, and if they hated each other,
they fought it out The feud has been usually overdrawn. It existed in
truth, but it rarely resulted in anything more than a “fist fight” at a
grist mill, but when it grew serious, it grew very serious indeed. The
mountaineer always shot to kill. He was no man of half measures; it was
a free, open, breezy war, and perhaps it was as healthy fighting as any.
At his worst, the native moonshiner was a better man than the imported
miner at his best. Up in the fog of the mountains men were killed; down
in the smoke of the coke ovens they were murdered; and between the two
words there is a distinction as big as the honor of a people.
The “killer” was common in McDowell, but the suicide was not, perhaps
because men rarely take their own lives in the mountains. It is a
trick of jaded civilization obtaining in congested cities, unknown and
unpractised by the dwellers among the hills. Men died in the mountains,
but by the hand of others.
So the sheriff was puzzled. That morning the body of Brown Hirst,
manager of the Octagon Coal Company, had been picked up in the muddy
waters of Tug River, just below the bridge. Above, on the railing of
the bridge, his coat and vest had been found, folded and apparently
laid carefully over a girder. The bridge was very high above the
rocky stream, and the body of the man was badly crushed--almost beyond
recognition. The man had evidently jumped from the bridge with the
deliberate intention of taking his own life. All this the sheriff had
heard as he rode into the town. But rumors are lurid, the sheriff knew,
and he concluded to go at once to the prosecuting attorney. He wanted
the tale straight from some one who could pry the facts free from the
fiction. On the steps of the court-house the sheriff had paused for a
moment and made some observations to himself. But a crowd was beginning
to gather in the street below, and the sheriff, being fully aware that
this portended a demand for his opinion and not being pleased to express
one, he turned abruptly and passed into the court-house.
The man of order walked leisurely down the hall to the office of the
prosecuting attorney and entered. A thin, red-haired girl was pounding
a typewriter with the energy of a two-horse-power engine.
Conventionalities were abbreviated in McDowell. The sheriff sauntered
in.
“Where's Jeb?” he drawled.
The red-haired girl paused for a moment and jerked her thumb over her
shoulder. “In there,” she said, “busy.” Then she went on.
Miss McFadden was an economist; she wasted no words. The sheriff threw
open the door, and walked into the private office. The prosecuting
attorney turned around from the window.
“Hello, White!” he said, “you are the very man I want.”
“Which indicates,” drawled the sheriff, “that you are a young person of
great discernment.”
“When one needs horse sense,” said the prosecuting attorney, “your
acquaintance is valuable. At other times it is a luxury.”
“Together,” observed the sheriff, mildly, “we create a sort of
equoasinus intellectual atmosphere, I suppose.”
The attorney took up a chair and placed it by the window.
“Sit there,” he said, “and listen.” Then he closed the door, and,
crossing the room, began to open the safe by his desk.
The sheriff sat down meekly and turned his dreamy blue eyes on the young
lawyer.
The prosecuting attorney of the county of McDowell was an imported
article. Like the ancient wise men, he came from the East, but the
manner of his coming was not quite that of the early sages. The sheriff
had come up from the hills of Virginia, while the prosecuting attorney
had come up from the sea. Not that this young scion of the law' was a
sailor or the son of a sailor, but on a certain summer afternoon at a
certain fashionable resort, Fate suddenly threw away the toys with which
she had been amusing him, and he immediately realized that the world was
a common treadmill instead of a breezy French drag.
It was a stiff shock, but the spine of young Mr. Huron was good, and
instead of stepping off the pier, at ten o'clock of that same night
he was demonstrating to a certain wealthy senator who had large
coal interests in West Virginia that it would be the part of no
inconsiderable wisdom to send a bright young fellow with a legal
education down into this great mining region for the purpose of
investigating the land titles, and for the purpose of keeping an eye
on the industries generally, and, as it is said in the law, “for other
purposes.”
The old senator was by no means blind to the very slight efficiency
of raw material, but he had a heart hidden away under his coat, and at
thirty minutes past eleven he was convinced. So J. E. B. Huron came into
the county of McDowell, nailed up his shingle, and stepped down into the
_melée_.
The opening chapters of his legal career were blue-tinted histories, but
the material in the backbone of young Mr. Huron was splendid material,
and he remained. The perception of this man of the law was no dwarfish
growth, and he used it like the wise. McDowell was Republican by 1600,
and “White” Carter was big boss; _post hoc ergo propter hoc_. J. E. B.
Huron was a Republican of ancient affiliation, and more specifically
he was right hand man to White Carter. This wisdom was not without its
reward. The convention that nominated Carter for sheriff, nominated
Huron for prosecuting attorney, and the big boss pulled his man through
in spite of splits, and splits, and independent tickets. The prosecuting
attorney was a handsome young fellow with a good level head. He knew the
value of the sheriff, and he held to him.
The prosecuting attorney took some papers from the safe, drew up a
chair, and sat down by the sheriff.
“You have heard of Hirst's suicide?” he said.
The sheriff nodded. “All but the antemortem note,” he drawled.
The prosecuting attorney smiled. “How did you know there was a note?”
“Jeb,” said the sheriff, “it is a part of the etiquette of suicide. No
man effects his exit without a parting word. It would be bad form, Jeb,
frightfully bad form.”
“So you guessed it?”
“No,” replied the sheriff, wearily, “my gray matter was allowed me for
the purpose of utility. I concluded.”
The prosecuting attorney selected a letter from the package of papers
and passed it over to the sheriff. That official examined the envelope
carefully, then he slowly opened it and spread the enclosed letter out
on the desk before him.
“Octagon Coal Company,” he read slowly, “Miners and Shippers of Coal
and Coke, Welch, West Virginia. Robert Gilmore, President. Brown Hirst,
Business Manager. All agreements are contingent upon strikes, accidents,
and other delays unavoidable or beyond our control.”
The sheriff paused for a moment. “Written at the office,” he observed,
“with a pen, on the company's stationery.”
The guardian of order removed his eyeglasses, wiped them carefully,
replaced them on his nose, and continued:
“The officers of the law are informed that I, Brown Hirst, have taken my
own life, deliberately and at a time when I am in the full possession of
my faculties. My reasons for so doing are of no importance to the law,
and are accordingly withheld. This statement is made merely for
the purpose of preventing any inference of murder, and for no other
purpose.--Brown Hirst.”
The sheriff replaced the letter in its envelope. “That,” he said, “Is a
sensible communication. By the very highest flame on the altar of folly,
it is an exceedingly sensible communication. Where did you find it?”
“The coat and vest,” replied the lawyer, “were found lying carefully
folded over the railing of the bridge. This letter was in the breast
pocket of the coat. Hirst evidently went about his death with great
deliberation. Still, I see no motive for suicide.”
“Jeb,” drawled the sheriff, “you are _long_ on motives. Everything must
have a motive stamped in red ink on its face. Can't you allow an obscure
citizen to change his permanent residence and retain his reasons? The
gentleman has said in his communication that his reasons are of no
moment to the law. Can't you take the gentleman's word for it? It is n't
courteous, Jeb. By the way, where is the corpse of the decedent?”
“Within the sacred jurisdiction of the coroner.”
“And the medical fraternity?” inquired the sheriff.
“Doctor Hart is over in Jacktown putting the finishing touches, it is
said, on old Pap Dolan, so the coroner called in a miracle doctor from
Cincinnati.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Miracle doctor,” he drawled, “is good--is very
good.”
The prosecuting attorney assumed the air of an instructor.
“Healers,” he began, “may be set down, for the purposes of a proper
classification, under three great heads or grand divisions, namely,
'yarb doctors,' 'old-line practitioners,' and 'miracle doctors.' Under
the first class may be grouped those persons who seek to effect cures
by means of the virtues of shrubbery, as well as that vast army of rural
healers known along the watershed of the Alleghanies as 'bleeders' and
'steamers.' Under the second great division are included those grave
professional persons supposed to be learned in the mysteries of the
human economy, who, for a fixed consideration, guess at the ill, and
thrust in a chemical: while the third and final division is composed of
those mysterious healers who affect to thwart dissolution by means of
marvellous knowledge or marvellous skill peculiar to themselves.
“The species of the first grand division infest all that great tract of
country bounded by a timber line. The second great class obtains in the
cities and villages, and affect buggies, drugs, and sombre dress.
The third class is a by-product of congested civilization, and begins
usually with a patent lotion, and ends usually with a hospital.”
White Carter waved his fat hand. “But, if your honor, please,” he
interrupted, “what did the miracle doctor say?”
“He said,” replied the prosecuting attorney, “that Brown Hirst was a
compound fracture from the sustentaculum tali to the tripod of Haller;
and from the tripod of Haller to the corpus callossum, he was a simple
fracture.”
“Horrible,” drawled the sheriff.
“And he said further,” continued the man of the law, “that the
suiciding decedent was probably afflicted with some species of psychical
neurosis.”
“_Domine miserere!_” murmured the guardian of order. “So the travelling
Æsculapius testified, and as the coroner was quite unable to spell the
craft terms, he simply wrote down in the record that Doctor Leon Dupey
of Cincinnati, after a careful examination, had pronounced Brown Hirst
dead, which was far less prolix and entirely true.”
“That coroner,” observed White Carter, “should be United States Senator
from Kansas.”
Huron took up the note and put it with the other papers.
“I judge this to be a plain case of suicide,” he said. “I have carefully
compared the writing with these letters. It is certainly Brown Hirst's
writing. Still, men do not act without a motive, and I see no
justifiable motive.”
“Well,” said the sheriff, “I happen to know that financially the Octagon
Coal Company is somewhat 'groggy.' How will that answer for a motive _ad
interim?_ Or, as the sensible would say, in the meantime?”
“Good,” said the prosecuting attorney. Then he took a pencil from
his pocket, and wrote on the back of the decedent's letter “Suicide.
Motive--business depression,” and replaced the papers in the safe.
The sheriff arose. “The legend you have subscribed is probably correct,”
he drawled, “but the ways of Providence are varied and mystic, and I
think I shall make some observations in my own right.” Then he went out.