When I again mounted the sprawling steps of the disheartened-looking
tavern, the landlord was sitting by the stove half asleep and alone.
He had prepared a little supper, he said, as he led the way, with a
benign smile, into the dining-room, where a lonely bracket lamp,
backed by a tin reflector, revealed a table holding a pitcher of milk,
a saucer of preserves, and some pieces of leather beef about the size
used in repairing shoes.
"Come, and sit down by me," I said. "I want to talk to you about this
young fellow Sands. Tell me everything you know."
"Well, you saw him; clean and pert-lookin', ain't he? Don't look much
like a habitual criminal, as Polk called him, does he?"
"No, he certainly does not; but give me the whole story." I was in a
mood either to reserve decision or listen to a recommendation of
mercy.
"Want me to tell you about the pocketbook or that ham scrape?"
"Everything from the beginning," and I reached for the scraps of beef
and poured out a glass of milk.
"Well, you saw Chris Rankin, didn't you,--that fellow that talked
about jail-birds? Well, one night about six or seven years ago,"--the
landlord had now drawn out a chair from the other side of the table
and was sitting opposite me, leaning forward, his arms on the
cloth,--"maybe six years ago, a jay of a farmer stopped at Rankin's
and got himself plumb full o' tanglefoot. When he come to pay he
hauled out a wallet and chucked it over to Chris and told him to take
it out. The wallet struck the edge of the counter and fell on the
floor, and out come a wad o' bills. The only other man besides him and
Chris in the bar-room was Dick. It was Saturday night, and Dick had
come in to git his paper, which was always left to Rankin's. Dick seen
he was drunk, and he picked the wallet up and handed it back to the
farmer. About an hour after that the farmer come a-runnin' in to
Rankin's sober as a deacon, a-hollerin' that he'd been robbed, and
wanted to know where Dick was. He said that he had had two rolls o'
bills; one was in an envelope with three dollars in it that he'd got
from the bank, and the other was the roll he paid Chris with. Dick, he
claimed, was the last man who had handled the wallet, and he vowed
he'd stole the envelope with the three dollars when he handed it back
to him.
"When the trial come off everything went dead ag'in Dick. The cashier
of the bank swore he had given the farmer the money and envelope, and
in three new one-dollar bills of the bank, mind you, for the farmer
had sold some ducks for his wife and wanted clean money for her. Chris
swore he seen Dick pick it up and fix the money all straight again for
the farmer; the farmer's wife swore she had took the money out of her
husband's pocket, and that when she opened the wallet the envelope was
gone, and the farmer, who was so dumb he couldn't write his name,
swore that he hadn't stopped no place between Chris Rankin's and home,
'cept just a minute to fix his traces t'other side of Big Pond Woods.
"Dick's mother, of course, was nigh crazy, and she come to me and I
went and got Lawyer White. It come up 'fore Judge Polk. After we had
all swore to Dick's good character and, mind you, there warn't one of
'em could say a word ag'in him 'cept that he lived in Hell's Diggin's,
Lawyer White began his speech, clamin' that Dick had always been
square as a brick, and that the money must be found on Dick or
somewheres nigh him 'fore they could prove he took it.
"Well, the jury was the kind we always git 'round here, and they done
what Polk told 'em to in his charge,--just as they always do,--and
Dick was found guilty before them fellers left their seats. The mother
give a shriek and fell in a heap on the floor, but Dick never changed
a muscle nor said a word. When Polk asked him if he had anything to
say, he stood up and turned his back on Polk, and faced the
court-room, which was jam full, for everybody knowed him and everybody
liked him--you couldn't help it.
"'You people have knowed me here,' Dick says, 'since I was a boy, and
you've knowed my mother. I ain't never in times back done nothin' I
was ashamed of, and I ain't now, and you know it. I tell you, men, I
didn't take that money.' Then he faced the jury. 'I don't know,' he
said, 'as I blame you. Most of you don't know no better and those o'
you who do are afraid to say it; but you, Judge Polk,' and he squared
himself and pointed his finger straight at him, 'you claim to be a man
of eddication, and so there ain't no excuse for you. You've seen me
grow up here, and if you had any common sense you'd know that a man
like me couldn't steal that man's money, and you'd know, too, that he
was too drunk to know what had become of it.' Then he stopped and said
in a low voice, and with his teeth set, looking right into Polk's
eyes: 'Now I'm ready to take whatever you choose to give me, but
remember one thing, I'll settle with you if I ever come back for
puttin' this misery on to my mother, and don't you forget it.'
"Polk got a little white about the gills, but he give Dick a year, and
they took him away to Stoneburg.
"After that the mother ran down and got poorer and poorer, and folks
avoided her, and she got behind and had to sell her stuff, and a month
before his time was out she got sick and pretty near died. Dick went
straight home and never left her day nor night, and just stuck to her
and nursed her like any girl would a-done, and got her well again. Of
course folks was divided, and it got red-hot 'round here. Some
believed him innercent, and some believed him guilty. Lawyer White and
fellers like him stuck to him, but Rankin's gang was down on him; and
when he come into Chris's place for his paper same as before, all the
bums that hang 'round there got up and left, and Chris told Dick he
didn't want him there no more. That kinder broke the boy's heart,
though he didn't say nothing, and after that he would go off up in the
woods by himself, or he'd go huntin' ches'nuts or picking flowers, all
the children after him. Every child in the settlement loved him, and
couldn't stay away from him. Queer, ain't it, how folks would trust
their chil'ren. All the folks in Hell's Diggin's did, anyhow."
"Yes," I interrupted, "there was one with him to-night in the stage."
"That's right. He always has one or two boys and girls 'long with him;
says nothin' ain't honest, no more, 'cept chil'ren and dogs.
"Well, when his mother got 'round ag'in all right, Dick started in to
get something to do. He couldn't get nothin' here, so he went acrost
the mountains to Castleton and got work in a wagon fact'ry. When it
come pay day and they asked him his name he said out loud, Dick Sands,
of Hell's Diggin's. This give him away, and the men wouldn't work with
him, and he had to go. I see him the mornin' he got back. He come in
and asked for me, and I went out, and he said, 'Uncle Jimmy, they mean
I sha'n't work 'round here. They won't give me no work, and when I git
it they won't let me stay. Now, by God!'--and he slammed his fist down
on the desk--'they'll support me and my mother without workin',' and
he went out.
"Next thing I heard Dick had come into Rankin's and picked up a ham
and walked off with it. Chris, he allus 'lowed, hurt him worse than
any one else around here, and so maybe he determined to begin on him.
Chris was standin' at the bar when he picked up the ham, and he
grabbed a gun and started for him. Dick waited a-standin' in the road,
and just as Chris was a-pullin' the trigger, he jumped at him,
plantin' his fist in 'tween Chris's eyes. Then he took his gun and
went off with the ham. Chris didn't come to for an hour. Then Dick
barricaded himself in his house, put his mother in the cellar, strung
a row of cartridges 'round his waist, and told 'em to come on. Well,
his mother plead with him not to do murder, and after a day he give
himself up and come out.
"At the trial the worst scared man was Polk. Dick had dropped in on
him once or twice after he got out, tellin' him how he couldn't git no
work and askin' him to speak up and set him straight with the folks.
They do say that Polk never went out o' night when Dick was home,
'fraid he'd waylay him--though I knew Polk was givin' himself a good
deal of worry for nothin', for Dick warn't the kind to hit a man on
the sly. When Polk see who it was a-comin' into court he called the
constable and asked if Dick had been searched, and when he found he
had he told Ike Martin, the constable, to stand near the bench in case
the prisoner got ugly.
"But Dick never said a word, 'cept to say he took the ham and he never
intended to pay for it, and he'd take it again whenever his mother was
hungry.
"So Polk give him five years, sayin' it was his second offense, and
that he was a 'habitual criminal.' It was all over in half an hour,
and Ike Martin and the sheriff had Dick in a buggy and on the way to
Stoneburg. They reached the jail about nine o'clock at night, and
drove up to the gate. Well, sir, Ike got out on one side and the
sheriff he got out on t'other, so they could get close to him when he
got down, and, by gosh! 'fore they knowed where they was at, Dick give
a spring clear over the dashboard and that's the last they see of him
for two months. One day, after they'd hunted him high and low and lay
'round his mother's cabin, and jumped in on her half a dozen times in
the middle of the night, hopin' to get him,--for Polk had offered a
reward of five hundred dollars, dead or alive,--Ike come in to my
place all het up and his eyes a-hangin' out, and he say, 'Gimme your
long gun, quick, we got Dick Sands.' I says, 'How do you know?' and he
says, 'Some boys seen smoke comin' out of a mineral hole half a mile
up the mountain above Hell's Diggin's, and Dick's in there with a bed
and blanket, and we're goin' to lay for him to-night and plug him when
he comes out if he don't surrender.' And I says, 'You can't have no
gun o' mine to shoot Dick, and if I knowed where he was I'd go tell
him.' The room was full when he asked for my gun, and some o' the boys
from Hell's Diggin's heard him and slid off through the woods, and
when the sheriff and his men got there they see the smoke still comin'
up, and lay in the bushes all night watchin'. 'Bout an hour after
daylight they crep' up. The fire was out and so was Dick, and all they
found was a chicken half cooked and a quilt off his mother's bed.
"'Bout a week after that, one Saturday night, a feller come runnin' up
the street from the market, sayin' Dick had walked into his place just
as he was closin' up,--he had a stall in the public market under the
city hall, where the court is,--and asked him polite as you please for
a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, and before he could holler Dick
was off again with the bread under his arm. Well, of course, nobody
didn't believe him, for they knowed Dick warn't darn fool enough to be
loafin' 'round a place within twenty foot of the room where Polk
sentenced him. Some said the feller was crazy, and some said it was a
put-up job to throw Ike and the others off the scent. But the next
night Dick, with his gun handy in the hollow of his arm, and his hat
cocked over his eye, stepped up to the cook shop in the corner of the
market and helped himself to a pie and a chunk o' cheese right under
their very eyes, and 'fore they could say 'scat,' he was off ag'in and
didn't leave no more tracks than a cat.
"By this time the place was wild. Fellers was gettin' their guns, and
Ike Martin was runnin' here and there organizing posses, and most
every other man you'd meet had a gun and was swore in as a deputy to
git Dick and some of the five hundred dollars' reward. They hung
'round the market, and they patrolled the streets, and they had signs
and countersigns, and more tomfoolery than would run a circus. Dick
lay low and never let on, and nobody didn't see him for another week,
when a farmer comin' in with milk 'bout daylight had the life pretty
nigh scared out o' him by Dick stopping him, sayin' he was thirsty,
and then liftin' the lid off the tin without so much as 'by your
leave,' and takin' his fill of the can. 'Bout a week after that the
rope got tangled up in the belfry over the court-house so they
couldn't ring for fires, and the janitor went up to fix it, and when
he came down his legs was shakin' so he couldn't stand. What do you
think he'd found?" And the landlord leaned over and broke out in a
laugh, striking the table with the flat of his hand until every plate
and tumbler rattled.