The celebrated equity case of the Tidewater and Western Railroad
Company _vs._ the Delaware Valley and Eastern Railroad Company came on
to be heard at Mooreville on the second Monday of December term. The
question at issue was the priority of right to build a railroad through
Pickett’s Gap. When court convened at two o’clock, the court room was
crowded. The case had aroused great public interest and curiosity.
Besides the local counsel engaged, there were eminent lawyers in
attendance from New York and Philadelphia. There was bound to be some
nice legal sparring, and people wanted to see and hear it. The battle
began soon after the case was opened, when the Tidewater and Western
offered in evidence their paper title to the route acquired by them
from the old Lackawanna Company. The D. V. & E. people had not expected
this, and it provoked a prolonged contest between counsel. Indeed, the
better part of the afternoon was occupied in the effort to get this
title in evidence. When it was finally admitted another struggle was
immediately precipitated by the offer of the minutes of the meeting of
the board of T. & W. directors, at which the route through Pickett’s
Gap was formally adopted. And when this contention was settled in favor
of the T. & W. it was time for adjournment.
Just enough evidence had been taken to whet the appetite of the public
for more. And when court was opened at nine o’clock on the following
morning the court room was again crowded, notwithstanding the fierce
snow-storm that was raging outside. Pickett, the T. & W. engineer, and
his assistants were put on the stand to identify the map of the route
and to testify regarding the right location through Pickett’s Gap.
There was very little cross-examination. The defence were evidently
saving their ammunition. Then the plaintiff rested, and the D. V.
& E. took up their side of the case. Their charter was admitted
without objection; but over the testimony showing the adoption, by
the board, of the Pickett’s Gap route, there was a lively tilt.
Indeed, it appeared from the evidence in the case that the directors
of both companies had held their meetings on the same day, and at
practically the same hour, for the purpose of receiving the report
of the engineer and adopting the route recommended by him. There was
also a long contest over the admission of the route-map and profile,
and when these were finally admitted the court adjourned for the noon
recess. The wind was playing wildly with the driving snow, and across
the paths through the court-house square great drifts had already
formed. Lawyers, witnesses, and spectators set their faces against
the storm, pulled the collars of their great-coats up about their
ears, and struggled to their hotels and homes. At two o’clock they all
struggled back again through the still driving, drifting snow. Indeed,
the crowd was even greater than at the morning session. Nicholson, the
D. V. & E. engineer, and every member of his corps were called on the
stand to testify to the setting of the stakes, through Pickett’s Gap,
on the afternoon of September twenty-seventh. No amount or severity
of cross-examination could shake the testimony of any of them on that
point. Nor could any of them explain why the stakes were not still
in position (if they were not) when Pickett made his survey some six
or eight hours later. Nicholson declared, however, in answer to a
question on direct examination, that the surreptitious removal of the
stakes would benefit no one unless it might be the T. & W. Railroad
Company. But this objectionable answer was, on motion of counsel for
the T. & W., stricken from the record. Templeton, the Philadelphia
lawyer, took up the cross-examination.
“It appears,” he said to Nicholson, “from this map which I have before
me, that you located your route directly through the Pickett graveyard.
Is that true?”
“It is.”
“And in making your relocation did you again pass through the
graveyard?”
“We did.”
“Is there any other practicable route by which to reach the entrance to
the gap except the one occupied by the Tidewater and Western running to
the south side of the brook?”
“There is no other.”
“If then it should turn out that your company has no legal right to
occupy this graveyard as a site for a railroad, you would find it
difficult to effect an entrance to the gap from the west?”
“Yes, sir, practically impossible.”
“And did you not know, when you projected your line across that
graveyard, that your company, by virtue of the laws of Pennsylvania,
had no right to occupy it with a railroad?”
“I knew that we had no right without the consent of the owner. That
consent, however, has been obtained.”
“In what way?”
“By fraud!”
It was not the witness who made this answer; it was Abner Pickett.
Seated on the front row of benches, within easy distance of the witness
stand, he had absorbed the testimony with intense interest, holding
himself in check with remarkable self-restraint until Templeton’s
question gave him an opportunity for a verbal shot which he had not the
power to repress. Every eye in the court room was turned on him, but he
cared little for that. A tipstaff came up and warned him not to repeat
the offence, and then the examination of witnesses was resumed.
And so Abner Pickett sat, that morning, and looked upon and listened to
his own son, Dannie’s father, as he gave his testimony on the witness
stand. Handsome, manly, frank in all his answers, the impression
created by Charlie Pickett, both in the mind of the court and in the
minds of the spectators, was a most favorable one. Long before he had
finished there was not an unprejudiced person in the court room who was
willing to believe, for a moment, the insinuation made by Nicholson
that the D. V. & E. stakes had been removed under Pickett’s direction
for the benefit of the T. & W. And when, on cross-examination, he was
pressed to give his reason for going around instead of across the
Pickett graveyard, he was content to reply simply that he understood
that the right of eminent domain, conferred by the commonwealth of
Pennsylvania upon railroad corporations, did not include the right to
occupy burial-places. And Abner Pickett, who knew of his son’s far
deeper reason for not crossing the graveyard, listened with bowed
head, appreciating to the full the delicacy which so skilfully avoided
the thrusting of personal and family sentiments and secrets before
the court and the public. It was the first time in thirteen years
that he had looked upon Charlie’s face. He could not help but observe
how mature and manly the boy had grown; he could not help but admire
his stalwart figure, his handsome countenance, his graceful bearing.
He could not wholly repress the feeling of pride that would swell
up in his heart as he looked upon this splendid specimen of young
manhood, and listened to his answers, given with a quickness and rare
intelligence not often found in the court room. “This is your boy,”
something in his breast kept repeating to him; “this is your boy; this
is _your_ boy.”
And yet--and yet, for two days he sat with him in the same room,
brushed past him in the corridor, could have reached out his arm at
almost any moment and touched him, looked straight again and again
into his appealing and eloquent eyes, and never gave the first sign or
hint that he desired a reconciliation. Strange how stubbornness and
obstinacy and the unforgiving spirit will rule the natures and thwart
the happiness of men.
Gabriel was called to the witness stand to testify to having seen
Nicholson and his men set their stakes from the mouth of the gap
westerly on the afternoon of September twenty-seventh.
“Yes,” he replied, in answer to the lawyer’s question. “I seen ’em.
They come straight from the gap acrost the graveyard an’ up into the
potater field where I was workin’.”
“Saw them set their stakes, did you?”
“Ev’ry one of ’em; ’specially the one they hammered into the middle of
the graveyard.”
“Did you see any stakes in the gap that day?”
“Not a stake. Wasn’t through the gap till the next mornin’. Then they
was a plenty of ’em there; but not a sign of a stake in the graveyard.
Wa’n’t that kind o’ queer?”
“Very. Now, then, did you see any one remove any of those stakes?”
“Not a person.”
“Did you remove any of them yourself?”
“No, siree!”
“Was any one with you in the potato field when the engineers came up?”
“Yes; Dannie.”
“Dannie who?”
“Dannie Pickett; Abner Pickett’s gran’son.”
“Is he in court?”
“I reckon he ain’t. He didn’t come yisterday; an’ I sh’d say he’d find
it perty tough sleddin’ to git here to-day.”
“Now, then, did you or Dannie Pickett threaten those engineers with any
harm?”
“Well, I reckon I told ’em it wouldn’t be healthy fer ’em ef Abner
Pickett was on deck; an’ Dannie, he ’lowed ’at they wouldn’t no
railroad run through _his_ gran’pap’s graveyard; ho! ho! ho!”
The recollection of the circumstance seemed to amuse Gabriel very much.
“Funny, was it?” asked the lawyer.
“Funny ain’t no name fer it,” replied Gabriel.
Then the lawyer--Marshall of New York--put on an air of severity.
“Now, sir, did you hear any one, at any time, threaten to destroy or
remove the stakes set by the Delaware Valley & Eastern engineers?”
Gabriel waited a moment before answering. He was evidently pondering
the matter deeply.
“W’y, I can’t say adzackly,” he replied slowly, “as I heard anybody
threaten to pull up them stakes. No, I can’t say adzackly as I did.”
“Well, what threats did you hear concerning those stakes?”
“W’y, I didn’t hear nobody threaten to pull ’em out, er hammer ’em in,
er chop ’em down, er burn ’em up. No, sir, I didn’t.”
Gabriel looked beamingly down on the array of counsel, feeling that he
had covered the ground that time, at any rate. He did not know that he
had simply whetted the lawyer’s appetite for information.
“Come, now, answer the question. You heard threats, what were they?”
“W’y, I can’t adzackly say as I heard any threats.”
Marshall, the lawyer, was becoming annoyed. He rose to his feet and
shook his forefinger angrily at Gabriel.
“You know more about this matter than you are willing to reveal,” he
shouted. “Now, sir, I want you to tell this court what you know and all
you know about the removal or threatened removal of those stakes!”
Gabriel looked smilingly down upon him.
“Well,” he replied slowly, “ez ol’ Isra’l Pidgin use to say, ‘Ef ye
don’t know a thing, better let somebody else tell it.’ Thuffore I’d a
leetle ruther somebody else’d tell it.”
“And who is Israel Pidgin?”
“Oh, an ol’ feller I use to know up in York State.”
“Confine yourself to Pennsylvania and answer my question. I shall try
to make it simple and direct. Did you, at any time, hear any person
make a threat to remove those stakes, or express a wish to have them
removed? Yes or no.”
This question was getting dangerously close to Abner Pickett. Gabriel
recalled, with startling distinctness, that night on his employer’s
porch, when the old man declared with such terrible emphasis that no
person could do a better deed than to pull out all the stakes and throw
them into the brook. And there was Abner Pickett now, sitting on the
front bench, head and shoulders above the crowd, piercing him through
with those clear blue eyes. He was in a quandary. He hesitated long
before replying.
“Well,” he said, at last, “I can’t say that I heard anybody say
adzackly that; no, I can’t.”
The lawyer followed up his clew mercilessly.
“Did you hear any one, at any time, say that it would be right and
proper to remove or destroy those stakes?”
Before Gabriel could answer, Templeton, the opposing lawyer, was on his
feet.
“Counsel forgets,” he declared, “that this is his own witness whom he
appears to be cross-examining. I demand the enforcement of the rule and
the protection of the witness.”
Judge Moore removed his glasses and poised them between his thumb and
forefinger.
“The witness appears to be unfriendly and evasive,” he declared.
“We think counsel is within his rights in pressing the question.
Proceed.”
The incident gave Gabriel time for thought; but if he had had a year in
which to think it out, he could not have framed a successfully evasive
answer to the question. And it added not a little to his discomfiture
that Abner Pickett’s eyes were still piercing him like arrows of fire.
“Well,” said Marshall, impatiently, “answer the question. We can’t wait
all day.”
“W’y,” stammered Gabriel, “I--well I--”
“Tell the truth, you fool!”
[Illustration: “‘Tell the truth, you fool!’”]
It was Abner Pickett who spoke that time, standing his full six feet
two and pointing his long forefinger at the disconcerted witness. Again
every eye in the court room was turned on the speaker. His arm was
grasped roughly by a tipstaff, who hurried to his side.
“Don’t remove him,” said Marshall. “I shall want him on the stand in a
moment.”
“The sooner, the better,” replied the old man, shaking off the grasp of
the officer and dropping into his seat.
Marshall turned to the witness.
“Answer my question,” he demanded sharply, “yes or no.”
“Yes,” replied Gabriel.
“Who said so?”
“Abner Pickett.”
“When?”
“The same night the stakes was set.”
“What did he say?”
“He said nobody could do a better thing than to pull ’em all up an’
throw ’em into the crick.”
“That will do. Abner Pickett take the witness stand.”
Things were moving rapidly now. Before Gabriel fairly knew it he was
down out of the witness box, and his employer had taken his place and
been duly sworn.
“Are you the Abner Pickett of whom the last witness spoke?” was the
first question asked him; and the answer came with a promptness that
was startling.
“The same man exactly.”
“And is it true that you declared that a person could do no better deed
than to remove the stakes set by the D. V. & E. engineers?”
“True as Gospel.”
People in the court room craned their necks and listened intently. This
witness promised to be interesting, to say the least.
Back near the main entrance to the court room there was some noise
and confusion. A door had opened and a boy had stumbled in. Numb and
stiff and faint with cold and fatigue he had tripped awkwardly over a
constable’s staff and had fallen to the floor. People in that part of
the room turned in their seats to see what the noise was about, and
those near by looked curiously at the prostrate boy. He was helped to
his feet by the constable, duly admonished, and given a seat on the
last row of benches but one. It was Dannie Pickett. How he had managed
to force his way, in the teeth of that terrible storm, through the
great drifts that blocked the country roads, down into the deserted
streets of the town, and thence to the county court-house, no one was
ever afterward quite able to make out, nor was he himself ever able
fully to explain. It was one of those feats of physical endurance made
possible only by the splendid power of determination, and even then
fairly striking across the border line of the naturally possible into
the realm of the miraculous and the providential.
As Dannie breathed the warm air of the court room, he began to regain
his strength, and, save the aching in his limbs, and the pricking
sensations over his entire body, he suffered no pain. When the mist
had cleared away from before his eyes, he saw that his grandfather,
whom he had intended to search out, and to whom he had resolved to
make his confession immediately on his arrival, was sitting up in the
witness stand, undergoing examination. And down to his ears, through
the intense quiet of the court room, came the lawyer’s question:--
“Don’t you know that the law of Pennsylvania makes it a crime,
punishable by fine and imprisonment, to remove stakes set by a surveyor
or engineer?”
Abner Pickett glared at his questioner.
“I ain’t here,” he replied, “to tell you what I know or don’t know
about the laws o’ Pennsylvania. If you’ve got any questions to ask
about the facts, ask ’em and I’ll answer to the best o’ my ability.”
Consciously or unconsciously he had placed himself within the rules of
evidence and the protection of the law. Marshall saw that he had lost a
point, and he started out on a new tack.
“Very well, Mr. Pickett. We will get down to facts. Where was this
celebrated declaration of yours, as testified to by the preceding
witness--where was it made?”
“On my side porch, in the evenin’ of September twenty-seventh; the
evenin’ o’ the day the stakes were put in.”
“Very good; who were present and heard it?”
“Well, David Brown was there for one. No, he wasn’t, either. He’d gone
home. There wasn’t anybody there except my grandson, Dannie, and that
fool that was just on the witness stand.”
“Gabriel?”
“Yes, Gabriel.”
“Where did he go then?”
“He went to bed.”
“Where did you go?”
“I went to bed.”
“And the boy?”
“Why, we all went to bed. It was after ten o’clock. Do you s’pose we
sit up all night down at the gap?”
“Really, I didn’t know, Mr. Pickett, without inquiring.”
The witness was losing his temper, the lawyer was getting sarcastic,
and the spectators were anticipating a still greater treat in store
from the continuance of the examination.
In his seat at the rear of the court room Dannie sat, dazed,
motionless, listening and hearing as one in a dream; in his breast
still the imperious demand of his conscience urging him to confess; in
his palsied limbs no power to move. Then Marshall took up a new line of
examination. He handed a paper to the witness directing his attention
to the name at the bottom of it.
“Is that your signature, Mr. Pickett?” he asked.
The old man looked at the paper carefully.
“Yes,” he replied, “it is. I wrote it myself.”
“This paper is an agreement to sell to the Delaware Valley and
Eastern Railroad Company a right of way fifty feet in width, through
your property, on the line located by their engineers on September
twenty-seventh last. You signed that paper voluntarily, without any
coercion, naming your own price for the property?”
“Let me tell you about that paper, young man.”
“No; answer my question, yes or no.”
“Then I say, yes. A hundred times, yes. I was neither bullied nor
bought; but I was deceived and defrauded. When I signed that paper
the only line of stakes I knew anything about was the line that went
across the brook and around the graveyard. I supposed that was the
route I was sellin’. I said so to the man who brought the paper. He
didn’t undeceive me. To all intents and purposes he lied to me, and his
corporation has attempted to rob me. Do you think, sir,” demanded the
old man, rising from his chair, with the crimson spreading over his
neck and face, and pointing his long forefinger at the lawyer, “do you
think I would sell to any person or to any company, for any money in
this world, the right to desecrate the graves of my dead; the right to
disturb bodies that were so dear to me in life, that I would have given
all I possessed to save them from the slightest hurt? Do you? I say, do
you?”
Marshall was getting more than he had bargained for; but he was too
good a lawyer to permit himself to lose his grip.
“Be seated, Mr. Pickett,” he said firmly, “and keep cool. Now, don’t
you know that, regardless of your agreement to sell the right of way,
a railroad company has a right, under the laws of this state, on
complying with certain conditions, to build its railroad on any land
belonging to any person?”
The old man dropped back into his chair.
“No,” he replied, “I don’t. I ain’t a lawyer; but I don’t believe
that’s the law. They say law’s founded on justice, and it ain’t just,
and it ain’t human for any one to have the right to disturb my dead
in their graves against my will. God’s Acre in this land and in this
age is his holy of holies. He sends his rain an’ dew an’ frost to fall
more gently on the homes o’ the dead than on the homes o’ the livin’;
and it’s the duty, and ought to be the joy of any man to protect that
sacred place from desecration.”
Through the hush that had fallen on the great crowd in the room, the
old man’s voice rang pathetically clear. On the faces of the spectators
there were no longer any smiles. The whole atmosphere of the court room
had changed to one of solemn earnestness. Even the examining lawyer saw
that it would not be fitting nor profitable to follow out that line
of questioning. When he again spoke it was in a quieter voice, and on
another branch of the subject.
“Mr. Pickett,” he said, “when did you first see this line of stakes?”
“Not till the next mornin’ after they were set.”
“Did you follow the line?”
“I did.”
“Did it run through your graveyard at that time?”
“No, sir, it went across the brook and around the graveyard, in as
han’some a curve as you ever saw.”
Charlie Pickett, sitting back among the spectators, his heart throbbing
with pity and pride as the old man’s examination progressed, heard this
last answer and flushed to his finger-tips.
“Were there no stakes in the graveyard?”
“Not one. I saw the place, though, where one had been set and pulled
out. I pulled another out of the same place myself four days later and
flung it into the brook.”
Marshall paid little heed to this last answer, although it was in the
nature of a direct challenge. A new thought appeared to have struck
him. He gazed at the ceiling contemplatively for a full minute before
proceeding with his examination.
“By the way,” he said, “how early in the morning was it that you saw
this line of stakes?”
“Just about sunrise.”
“Where had you come from?”
“From the house.”
“Had you been long up?”
“Just got up.”
“Did you go alone to look at the line?”
“Yes--no; my grandson, Dannie, went with me.”
“Where did you first see him that morning?”
“There at the house.”
“Indoors or outside?”
“Why, I believe he was comin’ up the path.”
“Had he been long out of bed?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Do you know where he had been when you first saw him coming up the
path?”
The old man waited a moment before answering. Some vague apprehension
of trouble about to fall upon Dannie seemed to be taking possession of
his mind.
“Why, no,” he replied slowly, “I can’t just say where he had been.”
“Was this the same boy that heard you make that declaration concerning
the stakes the night before?”
“Yes--why, yes--the same boy. Yes--the same boy.”
He spoke as if he were dazed. His voice dropped almost to a whisper.
He gazed out over the heads of the people in the court room with eyes
that were looking into the past. He saw Dannie as he appeared that
morning--his weariness, his exhaustion, his nervous excitement, his
utter collapse as they stood together in the dew-wet grass of the
graveyard. It all came back to him with the clearness, with the quick
cruelty of a lightning stroke. His eyes drooped, his face paled, his
head dropped lower and still lower, till his chin rested on his breast.
People in the court room who looked on him knew that something had
happened to him; but whether it was physical illness or mental distress
they could not tell. For a minute the room was still as death. Then the
stillness was broken by a slight movement among the rear benches, swift
footsteps were heard in the aisle, a boy came hurrying down to the bar
of the court. His face was drawn and pale with excitement and fatigue.
His eyes, from which shone both distress and determination, were fixed
straight ahead of him. As he went, he held out his hands toward the old
man on the witness stand.
“Gran’pap! Oh, Gran’pap! I did it. I pulled up the stakes. I threw ’em
into the brook. I did it in the night--in the night--in the moonlight.
Oh, Gran’pap!”
He crossed the bar, wound his way among chairs and tables, reached
the witness box, and stood there leaning against it, and looking up
beseechingly into his grandfather’s face.
For one moment Abner Pickett sat motionless, as if he were stunned,
looking with staring eyes at the boy standing below him. Then he
reached his long arms out over the rail and wound them about his
grandson’s shoulders, and then he hid his rugged face in the soft curls
that clustered on the boy’s neck.