desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading
them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to
what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which
messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They
bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that
were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little
village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men
gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would
mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well
know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth
while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the
Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy
relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes
the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was
characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of
penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations
upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of
his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary
upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one
of the notes he signed that day.
All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and
driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and
joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes
from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came
down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of
women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised
cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French
Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then
Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the
Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far
Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had
never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and
young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears,
their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt
of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal
and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and
unashamed.
Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight
brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men,
sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and
dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.
Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid
his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the
Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his
fingers and unfolded their story to him.
Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far
slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the
grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on
past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of
barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown
country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for
travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging
like hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--before
them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire
and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them.
They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with
them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through
all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the
blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching
thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes.
And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them,
torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and
wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that
it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight.
They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake
came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from
it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to
taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy
that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks.
This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all
might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had
yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered
around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might
come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt
ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened
hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And,
for these two men, to be seen meant to die.
So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture.
Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been
beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down
to the water.
They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of
the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no
more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until
they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst
and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised
now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up
so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything
else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew
that if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they would
have to have food at once.
Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died
out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was
food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it
did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great
thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one
thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else.
They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the
world!
Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a
few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself.
There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed,
seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not
remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some
baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat
them, but--Fresh grass! Or oats!
Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing
to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around
him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the
matter.
A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He
carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At
peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile
that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and
children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle
and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can
of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom
Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.
A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking
the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and
fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and
plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout,
faithful heart.
In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and
shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and
children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.
The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to
give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men
running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and
hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.
They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men
whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the
most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been
thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.
"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old
Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.
A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that
suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.
Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying
hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had
caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had
cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he
spoke now calmly, as one assured.
"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know
that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for
they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall
only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence
these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"
"We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd.
"True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there
are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills
risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater
ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the
end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a
thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this
trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my
friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you
that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.
"Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of the
village--and let them confess before the world and to him on paper
what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it."
A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the
time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought
forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit
upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his
long hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told.
They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of
all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for
the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.
The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save
these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a
Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend,
Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain
man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of
that story which he himself could but must not tell.
The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the
story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure
that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke
simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the
first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their
intention, he said:
"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I
will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not
move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets
must pass through me.
"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is
just one thing--Revenge."
"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd.
"It is _not_ my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the
business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have
I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all
the same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. And
never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing
this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my
fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your
souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you
sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and
say: A man warned us, but he had no _business_!
"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done.
And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh!
believe me now! You shall see right!"
The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men
about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his
feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.
He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.
Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her
dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done
his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden.
But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful
words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this
grief.
He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into
the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered
the things of God and His world.
VII
THE INNER CITADEL
"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute
satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and
with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August
twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a
long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered
man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall
not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have
done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths
of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes,
actual eye-witnesses of the crime."
In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District
Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against
Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had
died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald
Mountain.
From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of
Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the
hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial.
Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the
villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose
lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge
Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it
plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers
must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the
guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder
itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been
doing at the time.
For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed
just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little
of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over
in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these
people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had
suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible
to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer
of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages
of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that
a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had
started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear
version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the
identity of the slayer.
There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate
for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of
Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man
who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the
Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad
against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District
Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who
would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For
this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of
the hills against the U. & M. Railroad.
Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its
rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad
system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that
had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the
North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was
not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the
county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad
saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have
public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench.
And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for
the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it.
The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of
Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to
every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but
impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every
direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell
where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of
influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the
attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they
passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose
money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the
State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol
at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the
youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from
their influence.
Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured
the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people
homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be
impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any
county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way
of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and
roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public.
The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a muttered
and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a
spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter
charge.
Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand
Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment
against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had
found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a
peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his
company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the
circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and
disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man
who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the
railroad.
The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge
Leslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of
the public with this case until the people should have had time to
forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the
railroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only
one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case
into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise.
The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the
well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had
done its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecuting
attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a
"railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power
was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and
this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the
way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in
the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to
appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as
justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The
fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether
or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be
allowed to enter.
And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already
made up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had been
at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt
was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not
deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the
very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one
for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his
conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room
was there to hope for his acquittal?
The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had
been working night and day to put a roof over their families before
the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They
had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and
they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew--every
word of which would count against them. They had come down determined
that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it
were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the
machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them.
There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle
and glum, waiting for the end.
Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by
the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of
circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning
on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold
upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night
and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother
there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been
horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of
the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No
word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly
what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He
had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not,
in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of
course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would
have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was
aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him.
He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to go
up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering
somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers.
The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten
quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad
people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The
warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached
Lowville.
When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the
Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might
have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost.
Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he
was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His
own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath.