When the senate convened that day, strange and uncouth lookers-on stood
ranged about the state house corridors, and their unblinking eyes took
account of their chief adversary as he entered.
Upon his dark face, with its overhanging forelock, flickered no ghost of
misgiving; no hint of any weakening or excitement. His gaze betrayed no
interest beyond the casual for the men along the walls, whom report
credited with a murderous hatred of himself.
* * * * *
Boone was fretting his heart out at the cabin of Saul Fulton while he
knew that history was in the making at Frankfort, and on the evening of
the twenty-ninth an eagerness to be near the focus of activity mastered
him. The elements of right and wrong involved in this battle of
political giants were, to his untrained mind, academic, but the drama of
conflict was like a bugle-call--clear, direct and urgent.
He would not be immediately needed on the farm, and Frankfort was only
fifteen miles away. If he set out at once and walked most of the night,
he could reach the Mecca of his pilgrimage by tomorrow morning, and in
his pocket was the sum of "two-bits" to defray the expenses of "snacks
an' sich-like needcessities." For the avoidance of possible discussion,
he slipped quietly out of the back door with no announcement to Saul's
wife. With soft snowflakes drifting into his face and melting on his
eyelashes, he began his march, and for four hours swung along at a
steady three-and-a-half mile gait. At last he stole into a barn and
huddled down upon a straw pile, but before dawn he was on the way again,
and in the early light he turned into the main street of the state
capital. His purpose was to view one day of life in a city and then to
slip back to his uneventful duties.
* * * * *
The town had outgrown its first indignant surprise over the invasion of
the "mountain army," and the senator from Kenton had passed boldly
through its unordered ranks, as need suggested. The hill men had fallen
sullenly back and made a path for his going.
This morning he walked with a close friend, who had constituted himself
a bodyguard of one. The upper house was to meet at ten, and it was five
minutes short of the hour when the man, with preoccupied and resolute
features, swung through the gate of the state house grounds. The way lay
from there around the fountain to the door set within the columned
portico.
In circling the fountain, the companion dropped a space to the rear and
glanced about him with a hasty scrutiny, and as he did so a sharp report
ripped the quietness of the place, speedily followed by the more muffled
sound of pistol shots.
The gentleman in the rear froze in his tracks, glancing this way and
that in a bewildered effort to locate the sound. The senator halted too,
but after a moment he wavered a little, lifted one hand with a gesture
rather of weariness than of pain, and, buckling at the knees, sagged
down slowly until he lay on the flag-stoned walk, with one hand pressed
to the bosom of his buttoned overcoat.
Figures were already running up from here and there. As the dismayed
friend locked his arms under the prone shoulders, he heard words faintly
enunciated--not dramatically declaimed, but in strangely matter-of-fact
tone and measure--"I guess they've--got me."
* * * * *
Boone Wellver saw a throng of tight-wedged humanity pressing along with
eyes turned inward toward some core of excited interest, and heard the
words that ran everywhere, "Goebel has been shot!"
He felt a sudden nausea as he followed the crowd at whose centre was
borne a helpless body, until it jammed about the door of a doctor's
office, and after that, for a long while, he wandered absently over the
town.
Turning the corner of an empty side street in the late afternoon he came
face to face with Asa Gregory, and his perplexed unrest gave way to
comfort.
Asa was tranquilly studying a theatrical poster displayed on a wall. His
face was composed and lit with a smile of quiet amusement, but before
Boone reached his side, or accosted him, another figure rounded the
corner, walking with agitated haste, and the boy ducked hastily back,
recognizing Saul Fulton, who might tax him with truancy.
Yet when he saw Saul's almost insanely excited gaze meet Asa's quiet
eyes, curiosity overcame caution and he came boldly forward.
"Ye'd better not tarry in town over-long, Asa," Saul was advising in the
high voice of alarm. "I'm dismayed ter find ye hyar now."
"Why be ye?" demanded Asa, and his unruffled utterance was velvet
smooth. "Hain't I got a license ter go wharsoever hit pleasures me?"
"This hain't no safe time ner place fer us mountain fellers," came the
anxiety-freighted reply. "An' you've done been writ up too much in ther
newspapers a'ready. You've got a lawless repute, an' atter this mornin'
Frankfort-town hain't no safe place fer ye."
"I come down hyar," announced Asa, still with an imperturbable suavity,
"ter try an' git me a pardon. I hain't got hit yit an' tharfore I hain't
ready ter turn away."
Gregory began a deliberate ransacking of his pockets, in search of his
tobacco plug, and in doing so he hauled out miscellaneous odds and ends
before he found what he was seeking.
In his hands materialized a corn-cob pipe, some loose coins and
matches, and then--as Saul's voice broke into frightened
exclamation--several rifle and pistol cartridges.
"Good God, man," exploded the other mountaineer, "ain't ye got no more
common sense than ter be totin' them things 'round in this
town--terday?"
Asa raised his brows, and smiled indulgently upon his kinsman. "Why,
ginrally, I've got a few ca'tridges and pistol hulls in my pockets," he
drawled. "Why shouldn't I?"
"Well, git rid of 'em, an' be speedy about it! Don't ye know full well
thet every mountain man in town's goin' ter be suspicioned, an' thet
ther legislater'll vote more money than ye ever dreamed of to stretch
mountain necks? Give them things ter the boy, thar."
Fulton had not had time to feel surprise at seeing Boone, whom he had
left on the farm, confronting him here on the sidewalk of a Frankfort
street. Now as the boy reached up his hand and Asa carelessly dropped
the cartridges into it, Saul rushed vehemently on.
"Boone, don't make no mention of this hyar talk ter nobody. Take yore
foot in yore hand an' light out fer my house--an' ther fust
spring-branch ye comes ter, stop an' fling them damn things into ther
water."
* * * * *
When the wires gave to the world the appalling climax of that savagely
acrimonious campaign, a breathlessness of shock settled upon the State
where passion had run its inflammatory course. The reiteration of
Cassandra's prediction had failed to discount the staggering reality,
and for a brief moment animosities were silenced.
But that was not for long. Yesterday the lieutenants of an iron-strong
leader had bowed to his dominant will. Today they stood dedicated to
reprisal behind a martyr--exalted by his mortal hurt.
It appeared certain that the rifle had barked from a window of the
executive building itself--and when police and posses hastily summoned
had hurried to its doors, a grimly unyielding cordon of mountaineers
had spelled, in human type, the words "no admission."
The Secretary of State, who was a mountain man, was among the first to
fall under accusation, and had the city's police officers been able to
seize the Governor, he too would doubtless have been thrown into a cell.
But the Governor still held the disputed credentials of office, and he
sat at his desk, haggard of feature, yet at bay and momentarily secure
behind a circle of bayonets.
Just wrath would not, and could not, long remain only righteous
indignation. Out of its inflammation would spring a hundred injustices,
and so in opposition to the mounting clamour for extreme penalties arose
thundering the counter-voice of protest against a swift and ruthless
sacrifice of conspicuous scapegoats.
To the aid of those first caught in the drag-net of vengeful accusation,
came a handful of volunteer defence attorneys, and among them was
Colonel Wallifarro.
The leader with the bullet-pierced breast was dying, and in the
legislature the contest must be settled, if at all, while there was yet
strength enough in his ebbing life currents to take the oath of office.
His last fight was in keeping with his life--the persistence of sheer
resolution that held death in abeyance and refused surrender.
But when the Democratic majority of the assembly gathered at their
chambers, they encountered muskets; when, casting dignity to the snowy
winds, they raced toward an opera house, the soldiers raced with them,
and arrived first. When they doubled like pursued hares toward the Odd
Fellows' Hall, they found its door likewise barred by blade and muzzle.
Among the first men thrown into jail were Saul Fulton and his friend
Hollins of Clay County. Their connection with the arrival of the
mountaineers was not difficult to establish--and for the officers
charged with ferreting out the ugly responsibility, it made a plausible
beginning.
Meanwhile, the majority legislature, thwarted of open meeting, caucussed
in hotel bedrooms, and gave decision for the dying candidate. A hectic
and grotesque rumour even whispered that Mr. Goebel's gallant hold on
life had slipped before the credentials could be placed in his weakened
hand--and that the oath was solemnly administered to a dead body.
Boone had gone back to Saul's farm house, and on the way he had tossed
the cartridges into a brook that flowed along the road, but his brain
was in a swirl of perplexity and in his blood was an inoculation. He
would never know content again unless, in the theatre of public affairs,
he might be an onlooker or an actor.