falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now
the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed
Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward
to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away.
Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule
out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet
going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a
simple story. The thing _might_ have happened. It was entirely
credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of
Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not
the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his
life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was
now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying,
many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man
might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though
puzzled by the manner of the recital.
Even Lemuel Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to
any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went
back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly
without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make
him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the
story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible
fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her
church.
When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was
again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this
wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called.
He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires
would begin his speech at once.
He noticed that this witness was a girl from French Village whom he
had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau's
girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything,
and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn't the poor little
thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to
bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the
girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter
anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let
them hurt her.
Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against
interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say
nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers
and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to
relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very
beginning:
"Four years ago," she said, "Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was
killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe
Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know
who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife
and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the
knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the
price of his silence.
"Last summer this man Rogers came into the woods looking for some one
to help get the people to sell their land. He saw Rafe Gadbeau. He
showed him the knife. He told him that whatever he laid upon him to
do, that he must do. He made him lie to the people. He made him attack
the young Whiting. He made him do many things that he would not do,
for Rafe Gadbeau was not a bad man, only foolish sometimes. And Rafe
Gadbeau was sore under the yoke of fear that this man had put upon
him.
"At times he said to me, 'Cynthe, I will kill this man one day, and
that will be the end of all.' But I said, '_Non, non, mon Rafe_, we
will marry in the fall, and go away to far Beaupre where he will never
see you again, and we will not know that he ever lived.'"
Cynthe had forgotten her audience. She was telling over to herself the
tragedy of her little life and her great love. Genius could not have
told her how better to tell it for the purpose for which her story was
here needed. Dardis thanked his stars that he had taken the Bishop's
advice, to let her get through with it in her own way.
"But it was not time for us to marry yet," she went on. "Then came the
morning of the nineteenth August. I was sitting on the back steps of
my aunt's house by the Little Tupper, putting apples on a string to
hang up in the hot sun to dry." The Judge turned impatiently on his
bench and shrugged his shoulders. The girl saw and her eyes blazed
angrily at him. Who was he to shrug his shoulders! Was it not
important, this story of her love and her tragedy! Thereafter the
Judge gave her the most rigid attention.
"Rafe Gadbeau came and sat down on the steps at my feet. I saw that he
was troubled. 'What is it, _mon Rafe_?' I asked. He groaned and said
one bad word. Then he told me that he had just had a message from
Rogers to meet him at the head of the rail with three men and six
horses. 'What to do, _mon Rafe_?' 'I do not know,' he said, 'though I
can guess. But I will not tell you, Cynthe.'
"'You will not go, _mon Rafe_. Promise me you will not go. Hide away,
and we will slip down to the Falls of St. Regis and be married--me, I
do not care for the grand wedding in the church here--and then we will
get away to Beaupre. Promise me.'
"'_Bien_, Cynthe, I promise. I will not go to him.'
"But it was a man's promise. I knew he would go in the end.
"I watched and followed. I did not know what I could do. But I
followed, hoping that somewhere I could get Rafe before they had done
what they intended and we could run away together with clean hands.
"When I saw that they had gone toward the railroad I turned aside and
climbed up to the Bald Mountain. I knew they would all come back
there together. I waited until it was dark and they came. They would
do nothing in the night. I waited for the morning. Then I would find
Rafe and bring him away. I was desperate. I was a wild girl that
night. If I could have found that Rogers and come near him I would
have killed him myself. I hated him, for he had made me much
suffering.
"In the morning I was in the woods near them. I saw Rafe. But that
Rogers kept him always near him.
"I saw Rogers go out of the wood a little to look. Rafe was a little
way from him and coming slowly toward me. I called to him. He did not
hear. I saw the look in his face. It was the look of one who has made
up his mind to kill. Again I called to him. But he did not hear.
"I saw Rogers go running along the edge of the wood. Now he came
running back toward Rafe. He stopped and turned.
"The young Whiting was on his knee with the rifle raised to shoot. I
looked to Rafe. The sound of his gun struck me as I turned my face.
The bullet struck Rogers in the back of the head. I saw. The young
Whiting had not fired at all.
"I turned and ran, calling to Rafe to follow me. 'Come with me, _mon
Rafe_,' I called. 'I, too, am guilty. I would have killed him in the
night. Come with me. We will escape. The fire will cover all. None
will ever know but you and me, and I am guilty as you. Come.'
"But he did not hear. And I wished him to hear. Oh! I wished him at
least to hear me say that I took the share of the guilt, for I did not
wish to be separated from him in this world or the next.
"But he ran back always into the path of the fire, for those other
men, the old M'sieur Beasley and the others, were closing behind him
and the fire."
She was speaking freely of the fire now, but it did not matter. Her
story was told. The big, hot tears were flowing freely and her voice
rose into a cry of farewell as she told the end.
"Then he was down and I saw the fire roll over him. Oh, the great God,
who is good, was cruel that day! Again, at the last, I saw him up and
running on again. Then the fire shut him out from my sight, and God
took him away.
"That is all. I ran for the Little Tupper and was safe."
Dardis did not try to draw another word from her on any part of the
story. He was artist enough to know that the story was complete in its
naïve and tragic simplicity. And he was judge enough of human nature
to understand that the jury would remember better and hold more easily
her own unthought, clipped expressions than they would any more
connected elaborations he might try to make her give.
Lemuel Squires was a narrow man, a born prosecutor. He had always been
a useful officer to the railroad powers because he was convinced of
the guilt of any prisoner whom it was his business to bring into
court. He regarded a verdict of acquittal as hardly less than a
personal insult. He denied that there were ever two sides to any case.
But his very narrowness now confounded him here. This girl's story was
true. It was astounding, impossible, subversive of all things. But it
was true.
His mind, one-sided as it was always, had room for only the one thing.
The story was true. He asked her a few unimportant questions, leading
nowhere, and let her go. Then he began his summing up to the jury.
It was a half-hearted, wholly futile plea to them to remember the
facts by which the prisoner had already been convicted and to put
aside the girl's dramatic story. He was still convinced that the
prisoner was guilty. But--the girl's story was true. His mind was not
nimble enough to escape the shock of that fact. He was helpless under
it. His pleading was spiritless and wandering while his mind stood
aside to grapple with that one astounding thing.
The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these
hampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking and
discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All
democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to
a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county
had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.
He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more credible
than that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All had
told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided
smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act.
No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.
He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the
comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the
jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he
had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view
of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts
by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt
which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing
clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.
Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an
agreement.
The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.
Jeffrey Whiting stood up.
The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:
"Not guilty."
The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name
was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly
for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for
their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little
Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something
real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole
political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the
railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love
story of an ignorant French girl from the hills.
Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a
prisoner and brought him to his mother.
Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as he
stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all
the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the
sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey,
trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him
fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake
off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they
had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his
heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had
done to her in these four weeks and in these two days.
And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to
hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have
done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all
that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion
of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to
what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name.
Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her
with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl
as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice
he said brutally:
"You lied!"
Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words.
Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could
not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the
awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his
life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew
it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except
only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head
down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his
ear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been able
to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives,
unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the
line of death.
When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.
The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he
came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into
the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they
had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him.
They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were
not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and
their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which
he was quick to notice.
During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his
waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle
that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and
once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click
into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his
horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge
and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the
nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.
When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full
news of the last four weeks.
It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings
has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the
vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never
for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course
upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad
must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying
along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must
be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The
incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only
as they contributed to the general result.
Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There
were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate
committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an
obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by
procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for
the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything
they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no
animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as
impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction.
Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely
incidental.
Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as
an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been
Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been
used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey
Whiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad had
hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things
were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying
through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.
Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old
Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills
during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.
The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of
the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad
would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved
right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned
instantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use that
as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was
only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main
business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with what
seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands
which the railroad coveted.
They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to
rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole
people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering
which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was
worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the
thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming
for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey
Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to
be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win
in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could
not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?
Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the
people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit
the railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that
was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to
fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an
enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed
them. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised to
punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of
officials.
The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still
down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant
help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain
ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not
roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them
before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of
winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a
claim, for the mere privilege of living.
When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had
been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had
thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now
ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and
a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now
put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing
blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it
only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!
The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the
full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The
hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red
sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps,
where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the
autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should
have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but
blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the
east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle
of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the
eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!
Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here
were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen
built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what
shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were
enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again,
for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and
good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were
written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly
needful.
Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from
sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed
them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men
and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe
Cardinal.
The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting.
Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible
sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a
great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He
struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the
memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body
had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely
served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond
him.
At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night
had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the
railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from
them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they
had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they
were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early
summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be
now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter.
Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not
struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the
law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills
in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!
If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of
the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he
could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their
own.
If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for
days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the
hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing
was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for
them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to
fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If
the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it,
were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was
their own?
If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear
down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months.
They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have to
fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against
them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia,
but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than
militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their
people!
Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And in
the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!
Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?
Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of
ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people
could spare them, and mounted silently behind him.