Imprisonment proved an efficacious method of exorcising the “harnt”
upon the jury. Much of the sojourn in the county jail was expended in
criminations and recriminations. Not one of the jurymen would admit any
responsibility for their plight. Not one had entertained the slightest
belief in their ghostly associate. The mere contact with that practical,
prosaic mundane force, the law of the land, had so restored them that
they were emboldened to roundly denounce the harnt. And the name of poor
Peter Rood, which had been whispered with bated breath in the jury-room,
came smartly enough from the tongue even of Bylor. In fact, he was the
most persistent in disavowing susceptibility to spectral influence.
“I begged an’ begged ye ter shet up talkin’ ’bout sech,” he cried, which
was indeed the truth. “An’ ye jes’ kep’ it up an’ kep’ it up, till ye
skeered yerse’fs out’n yer boots, an’ then I couldn’t do nuthin’ with ye.”
They had all been locked temporarily into one room of the jail, while
the sheriff and jailer consulted in regard to the accommodations for
so unusual a number of prisoners. In their close quarters the jurymen
leaned against the wall or walked the floor, jostling each other in the
shadow, for the room was dark save for the moonbeams slanting through the
bars of the window. The foreman hung about in the obscure places, freely
addressed,—for they knew, without seeing, that he was there,—and required
to bear the brunt of all the reproaches for the calamity. Once he plucked
up spirit to retort.
“Ye war the very man ez yapped fur the dep’ty,” he said to Bylor, who
allowed himself to be drawn into argument.
“How’d I know ez you-uns war a-goin’ ter traipse down them steers an’
’low ter the jedge ez you-uns knowed mo’ law ’n he do? Ye dad-burned aged
idjit, ef ye warn’t older ’n me I’d lay ye out on this floor.”
“I felt jes’ like the tail of a dog in a fight,—could neither holp nor
hender the critter ez toted me ahint him, but war jes’ ez apt ter git
gnawed ez him,” said Jerry Price disconsolately.
“I looked ter see the jedge fetch him a pop ’side the head, myself,” said
the new juryman, evidently unacquainted with judicial methods. He had
regarded his capture to serve on the jury as a woful disaster, and could
hardly bear up under this aggregation of misfortunes. “Ef I hed knowed
what war comin’, I wouldn’t hev followed him down them steers.”
“Six spry young steers ’mongst my cattle,—I’ll never see ’em agin!” cried
old man Beames from out the darkness, reminded anew of his journeying
herds under the insufficient guidance of Bob. “I hev never done no wrong
in my life. I hev tuk heed ter my feet ter walk in the right way. An’
hyar in my old age, through another man’s fault, the door of a jail hev
been shet on me.”
His voice dropped. They were all feeling the poignant humiliation of the
imprisonment. They were honest men, to whom it could scarcely have come
but for this mischance. At every contortion of wounded pride they turned
upon the unlucky foreman.
“I ’lowed I’d drap in my tracks,” cried Ben Doaks, “whenst he jes’ tuk
the Code o’ Tennessee by the hawns an’ tail, an’ dragged it up afore the
jedge.”
And Jerry Price was fain to sneer, too.
“Did the Code hev nuthin’ in it ’bout cuttin’ out the tongue of a foreman
of a jury?” he demanded.
But the Code was an unabated fact still, and the nephew of the ex-justice
alone could say what was in it. “Naw, sir!” he retorted, emboldened by
the allusion to his superior knowledge, “nor about jailin’ a jury,
nuther. I don’t b’lieve the jedge hed the right ter jail the jury.”
“Waal,” drawled Jerry, satirically, “we-uns hed better make up our minds
powerful quick how we air a-goin’ ter pay him back fur it.”
The foreman was saved the mortification of acknowledging the hopelessness
of reprisal. A voice without sounded suddenly.
“I wanter see how many thar air,” said the jailer.
“On a jury? Shucks! ye’re funnin’. Twelve,” in the familiar tones of the
sheriff.
“I jes’ wanter look at ’em agin.”
“Ye sha’n’t,” retorted the sheriff.
He did not reckon on the fact that although he, as sheriff, had the
legal authority and control of the jail, the jailer was possessed of the
material keys, and locked and unlocked the doors at will. He opened this
one now, gingerly, and the men within felt the grin they could not see.
“Brung ’em hyar ’kase they couldn’t count,” he said, jocosely. “They air
the fust boarders we hev hed fur sech ez that.”
The sheriff, who was holding a lamp in the hall, pulled the door to,
still animated by his sense of duty, and the jury heard the lock click as
the facile jailer turned the key.
“They ’lowed thar war a harnt in the jury-room,” said the officer.
Within all were silent, that they might hear.
“I ain’t s’prised none,” said the jailer; “plenty o’ harnts hyar. Men
ez war hung, ye know,—liked our accommodations better’n them they got
arterwards; that brings ’em back. Tim Jenkins war dragged right out’n
that thar room whar the jury be now, when the lynchers kem an’ tuk him.
Hed me tied down-steers, ye ’member.”
He went off gayly down the hall, jingling his keys. Presently his voice
was heard in another mood, swearing at the judge and demanding, “What
sorter man is this hyar Gwinnan, ennyhow, ez you-uns hev got out thar on
the bench? Send me twelve men ter eat an’ sleep, an’ the jail ez full ez
it air! Does he think I keep a tavern? Thar ain’t room enough hyar fur
twelve fleas!”
He compassed the problem somehow, for the jurymen, smarting with
the indignity and hardship, were led forth the next morning, having
slept as well as was possible considering the united grievances of
the accommodations and the mortification, and eaten as their reduced
appetites and the prison fare permitted.
They resumed their deliberations in the jury-room, and it argues much for
their earnest desire to do right and their respect for their oath that
they did not find a verdict at hap-hazard. They reported again and again
that they could reach no decision. They were held over Sunday, and after
nightfall on Monday they came into the court-room, and in guarded phrase
and with some perturbation of manner announced once more that they could
not agree as to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner.
In answer to the usual question, the foreman was eager to explain that
they had experienced no difficulty other than a difference of opinion,
and felt no want of further instructions. He forbore to offer criticisms
upon judicial methods, and the men behind him, all acutely realizing
the position of the dog’s tail, breathed more freely. The judge looked
at them with a certain resentment in his eyes. He leaned back in his
chair, gnawing the end of his mustache. Mink sat beside his lawyer,
eager, intent, hardly appreciating at the moment the significance of
the disagreement. Harshaw had turned aside with a pettish mutter to his
yellow beard, for the final adjournment for the term impended, Gwinnan
being compelled to leave on the train that night to hold court in a
remote county in his own circuit.
How Gwinnan could infuse into his impassive mien and his soft,
expressionless drawl so caustic a suggestion of displeasure is one of
those mysteries of manner addressed to a subtle and receptive sense which
can take account of so fine and elusive a medium of communication.
The jury, in receiving their discharge, felt like culprits until they
were once more at large and in the outer air, when they swore at the
judge with the heartiest unanimity,—on this point they could agree,—and
promised themselves, taking note of his character as politician, that
if ever they were vouchsafed the opportunity they would retaliate. Then
among the loungers about the tavern they fell to asking the news with the
hungry interest of travelers who have been long absent.
They experienced a certain surprise to find that their accountability
as jurors had not ceased with their discharge. There was a manifest
inclination on the part of public opinion, as embodied in the idlers
about the hotel, to hold them individually responsible for the mischances
of the trial. Perhaps the impression that they had been long absent was
strengthened by the revolution which popular prejudice had accomplished
in the interval. Its flexibility could hardly be better illustrated than
by the fact that the prankish Mink had suddenly risen in its estimation
to the dignity of a public martyr.
“He’s a tremenjious wild scamp, the Lord knows,” said one, “but folks
ain’t jailed fur bein’ gamesome, an’ by rights ye oughter hev turned Mink
out’n that jail this evenin’.”
“Yessir,” assented another. “Mink oughter be mighty nigh Hazel Valley by
now, ef he had been gin a fair trial.”
That conclusive formula, “This is a free country, by the Lord!” was
often insistently reiterated in the discussion, for the bewildered jury
discovered that the persuasion of the prisoner’s innocence had never
wavered after Alethea Sayles had sworn that she had seen Tad Simpkins
since the disaster. The community at large had not been subjected to
the morbid influences of seclusion, and mental stress, and the nervous
shock which the jury had sustained upon the death of Peter Rood, and the
necessity of persistent consideration of spiritual and spectral phenomena
forced upon them by the attorney-general.
“You see, gentlemen,” said a young sprig of a lawyer, glad to air his
information, “you went off on the wrong road. ’Twarn’t the business o’
the defense to account for Tad. ’Twas the prosecution’s business to prove
that he was dead and that Mink killed him. And they didn’t do it; they
just proved he was missing, for that girl swore she saw him afterward.
They’ve got to prove the _corpus delicti_, gentlemen, in a case like
this.”
The jurymen were laughed to scorn when they suggested their doubts of the
genuineness of Tad’s appearance.
“Now didn’t the attorney-general stuff you as full of lies as an egg
of meat!” cried the young lawyer, divided between admiration of the
attorney-general’s resources and contempt for their credulity.
“Ye air the only folks in Cherokee County ez b’lieves sech,” said another
by-stander. “Old man Griff an’ all his gran’chil’n lef town yestiddy
evenin’ plumb sati’fied Tad’s alive, an’ goin’ ter hunt him up. An’ then
I reckon the old man’ll furgit all about his repentance, an’ club an’
beat him same ez he always done.”
“Waal,” demanded the ex-foreman, who was disposed to maintain the
difficulty of the question, “how could a idjit keer fur hisself all this
time?”
“Tad never war sech a idjit; could run a mill, an’ plough, an’ pull
fodder, an’ feed stock! I’ll be bound thar’s a mighty differ round old
man Griff’s diggins now, sure. He ’peared a idjit mos’ly when he war beat
over the head. Mos’ folks would look miser’ble then. He air lackin’, I
know, but I reckon he kin work fur hisself ez well ez he done fur old
man Griff. It’s a plumb shame ter jail Mink Lorey fur fower month more
till he kin git another fool jury ter try him, an’ mebbe send him ter the
Pen’tiary fur five year. I dunno what oughter be done ter sech a jury ez
you-uns.”
It was probably well for the public peace that events of general interest
had taken place during the seclusion of the jury which the by-standers
found a certain gloomy satisfaction in detailing; their attention was
thus readily enough diverted from the disagreements of the jury-room
to the circumstances of Peter Rood’s funeral,—who preached the sermon,
and who were in attendance. They all sat, solemnly chewing, tilted back
in their splint-bottomed chairs on the front gallery of the little
hotel. The lights which came from the doors and windows of the building,
slanting out in wide shafts, seemed to sever the gloom in equal sections.
The figures of the men were dimly seen in the dusky intervals. The stars,
in infinite hosts, were marshaled in the black sky, for the moon was
late to-night. Only about the horizon were melancholy desert spaces. The
summit line of the distant mountains was indistinguishable in the gloom.
The landscape was all benighted. The presence of invisible trees close
at hand was perceptible only to some fine sense of the differing degrees
of density in the blackness. A horse trotted through the slant of light,
falling into the road and showing the sleek roan of the steed and the
impassive face under the drooping hatbrim of the rider,—then loomed an
indeterminate centaur in the alternate glooms. The sounds of the town
were shrill, then faint, with lapses of silence. One forlorn cricket was
piping somewhere between the bricks of the pavement.
“’Pears ter me,” said Bylor, “toler’ble cur’ous ez they wagoned
deceased”—he had adopted the word from the reports of the sermon—“way up
yander ter Eskaqua Cove, ter be buried in the graveyard thar.”
“Waal,” explained a by-stander, “his mother ’lowed he’d feel mo’ lonesome
down hyar ’n he would ’mongst the mountings,—an’ I reckon he would.”
“Ennybody ez air dead always looked lonesome ter me,” suggested Ben Doaks.
“I don’t b’lieve thar’s a man in the Newnited States, alive or dead, ez
lonesome ez me!” cried the cattle-owner. “I wisht that thar durned moon
would heft over the mountings. Ez soon ez she shows her aidge I’m a-goin’
ter light out arter my cattle an’ Bob.”
“’Pears ter me,” said Doaks, reflectively, “ez things hev turned out
mighty cur’ous, ez he war buried in the same graveyard whar Lethe Sayles
seen Tad’s harnt.”
“I wouldn’t go by thar of a dark night fur nuthin’,” declared Bylor.
“Mought see both of ’em.”
“I reckon,” said Ben Doaks, “ez Peter Rood knows all ’bout’n it
now,—whether it war Tad’s harnt or no.”
Something at a distance sounded sharply and fell into silence.
“I reckon folks ez air dead hev got suthin’ mo’ ter tend ter’n studyin’
’bout folks they knowed in this life,” said Bylor, nodding his head with
grim conviction.
“Yes, sir-ee!” exclaimed the ex-foreman, as he chewed vigorously, and
spat at the post which upheld the floor of the gallery above; he was an
effective marksman. “They hev got a verdict in the courts of the t’other
world on Peter Rood by now. They ain’t got no failin’ human jury thar,”
he continued sanctimoniously. “I reckon he’s burnin’ in Torment before
now.” He offered this suggestion with that singular satisfaction in the
symmetry of the theory of fiery retribution characteristic of the rural
religionist.
Ben Doaks stirred uneasily. “I dunno ’bout that,” he said, dubiously.
“Rood war a perfessin’ member.” He himself laid great stress upon this
unattained grace.
“I know that,” said the ex-foreman, “but ’tain’t done him no good. I
hearn him ’low at camp ez he war a backslider, an’ ef the truth war
knowed I reckon he war a black-hearted sinner.”
Once more that strange sound, half smothered by the distance, smote upon
the air. Then the regular hoof-beat of a horseman riding by on the red
clay road interposed and rattled against the stones, and echoed from the
bridge below with hollow reverberations.
“What war that cur’ous noise?” demanded Ben Doaks.
“Sounded ter me like cattle a-bellerin’,” said old man Beames.
The attentive pause was illustrated by the red spark of each man’s
pipe, dulling as it was held motionless for a moment in the hand;
then restored to the smoker’s lips, it glowed into subdued brilliancy,
sometimes giving an elusive glimpse of the delicate and shadowy blue
vapor curling from the bowl. They heard nothing but a vague murmur,
dropping presently into silence.
“I b’lieve,” said Bylor, “ez Peter Rood hed suthin’ on his mind.”
“Me, too,” spoke up another man. “He sot next ter me, an’ he looked
troubled an’ tried, somehows, an’ wunst in a while he sighed mightily. I
dunno what ailed him.”
“I reckon he war sick,” suggested a by-stander.
“He didn’t ’pear ter be sick. He turned an’ looked at me plumb pleased
ter death when that Lethe Sayles ’lowed Tad war alive. An’ then when the
’torney-gineral made it out ez ’twar jes’ Tad’s harnt he jumped for’ards,
an’ pinted with his finger, an’ next thing I knowed the man war a harnt
hisself.”
The sound in the distance had become continuous, louder. Once more it
broke upon the conversation. “Boys,” said Jerry Price, in a tone of
conviction, “suthin’ is a-goin’ on somewhar.”
The vocation for the _rôle_ of spectator is strong in humanity. Each of
the long, lank mountaineers started up with unusual willingness, under
the impression that he was balked of some entertainment at which nature
intended that he should be dead-headed. The distant murmur was once more
lost in the sounds nearer at hand. A sudden resonant, brazen clangor
challenged the dark stillness. It had a vibratory, swaying iteration,
for it was the court-house bell, rung as an alarum to the law-abiding
population. As the group started swiftly in the direction of the sound, a
man came running at great speed down the pavement, almost overturning old
Beames, and called loudly to the proprietor of the hotel, asking if Judge
Gwinnan were within. They recognized the deputy sheriff as he rushed into
the bar-room.
“The old man’s been hevin’ hell with Mink Lorey, down yander at the
jail,” he explained in breathless gasps. “He kerried on like a crazy
idjit when we tuk him back,—fout like a wild-cat every foot o’ the way.
An’ now thar’s a crowd at the jail a-batterin’ the doors, an’ breakin’
the winders, an’ swearin’ they’ll take Mink Lorey out.”
In pursuit of the promise of excitement their feet did not lag. They
heard, as they set out, the deputy’s rasping voice behind them renewing
his anxious demand for Judge Gwinnan; then it was lost in the ceaseless
thud of their own feet, and the insistence of the bell filling the
darkness with its deliberate alternations of tone, till the night rocked
and swayed with the oscillating, remonstrant sound. Approaching the
court-house, they could hear those fainter and continuous vibrations
of the bell-metal, the turbulent but bated undertones, that set the
air a-trembling and seemed some muttered affirmation, some reserve of
clamors, that should presently break out, too, and utter wrath and
measured menace. The darkness seemed unparalleled, since there was
something to be done and at hazard. Only at long intervals in the
blackness, windows of dwellings were opened, and here and there a
venturesome female head was thrust out in baffled and hopeless curiosity.
But most of the houses had closed blinds and barred doors, for the alarum
of the court-house bell had told the inmates all that the prudent might
care to learn. The streets of Shaftesville, grass-grown as they were,
had known the tread of lynchers, and distrusted any lawless mission.
It was so dark that men, meeting at intersections of the streets, ran
blindly against each other, recoiling with oaths,—sometimes against trees
and posts. A few provident souls carrying lanterns, and looking in the
blackness like fleet fire-flies, were made aware when they encountered
the rescuers, in pressing in among the crowd in the jail-yard,—the
posse and the mob otherwise indistinguishable,—by having the lanterns
struck out of their hands. The jail was silent; its very vicinity had a
suggestion of glum resistance. Some consciousness of a darker and solid
mass in the air was the only cognizance that the senses could take of
its propinquity, except, indeed, the sound of breaking glass. A rail had
been dragged from a fence, and, in the hands of unseen parties, after the
manner of a battering-ram, the glass in the lower panes was shattered.
This was wanton destruction, for the bars withstood the assault. The
working of some instrument at them, ever and anon, was an evasive bit
of craft, for follow the sound as they might, the sheriff and his posse
could never locate it. A light showing in an upper window was saluted by
a volley of stones, and quickly disappeared. The missiles fell back in
the dense, panting, nameless, viewless crowd, eliciting here and there a
howl, succeeded by jeering laughter.
Once, as the glass crashed in a lower window, a child’s voice within
whimpered suddenly; a soothing murmur, and the child was silent.
“Mis’ Perkins,” called out a voice from among the mob to the jailer’s
wife, “make Jacob open the do’! Tell him we’ll string him up ef he don’t,
when we git holt o’ him.”
There was intense silence in the closely jammed, indistinguishable crowd
without, for who could say who was the posse or who the mob, helpless
against each other?
A murmur of remonstrance within. An interval. A sharp insistence from the
crowd, and a quavering response.
“I _can’t_, gentlemen!” cried a shrill feminine voice. “Jake’s sech a
bull-headed fool, he _won’t_!”
The summit line of the distant mountains was becoming vaguely visible;
the stars were not less bright, the black earth was as dark as ever, but
the moon-rise was imminent.
There was suddenly a surging commotion in the crowd; it swayed hither and
thither, and rushed violently upon the door. The point of attack being
plain enough, there was some feeble resistance, offered presumably by the
posse. A pistol was fired in the air—another—a wild turmoil; all at once
the door crashed and gave way; half the assailants were carried over its
splintered ruins by the force of their own momentum. There were lights
enough now springing up in every direction. Men with torches dashed
through the halls, holding them aloft with streaming clouds of flame and
smoke, as erratic as comets. It required only a moment, with the united
exertions of half a dozen stalwart young fellows, to break the door of
Mink’s cell; it offered no such opposition as the main entrance.
There was no cry of joy as they rushed in; no fraternal embrace for the
liberators who had risked so much in the cause of natural justice.
The cell was empty. The bars at the window were firm as ever. The locked
door was broken but a moment ago. And he was gone!
The word rang through the building. The infuriated crowd pervaded the
cell in a moment, like some tumultuous flood. The jailer himself was not
to be found. His wife and children had sought refuge elsewhere.
The doors were guarded against the sheriff, while a select party searched
every room in the house. Some serious fright was occasioned to certain
malefactors, who had reason to fear the people more than the law, and
esteemed the jail in some sort as a haven, but there were many who
appealed for liberation. One of these, a victim of the federal court,
Big Brandy Owen by name, made so earnest an insistence that his case was
considered. But he was no genuine moonshiner, it was argued; he was only
a saloon-keeper who had fallen a victim to the liquor laws. “We dunno
ye,” they prevaricated. “Ye ain’t labeled Brandy, ye see.” And so they
locked his door upon him.
They did as much damage as they could, in default of accomplishing their
object, and on retiring they dispersed without recognition among the
peaceful citizens who had weakly striven, half-heartedly, to uphold the
law.
The moon was up. The Great Smoky Mountains, in magnificent immensity,
clasped the world in the gigantic curve about the horizon east and
south. The trees seemed veiled in some fine, elusive silver gauze,
so gleaming a line of light came to the eye from their boughs. Frost
sparkled upon the grass-fringed streets. The shadows were sharp and
black. The stars—few now—faintly scintillated in empyreal distances. The
town was so still, not even a dog barked. The rescuers experienced a
luxury of bravado in the realization that it was for fear of them that it
was fain to hold its breath and lie in darkness, save for the light of
the moon. Perhaps it was as well, and spared further mischief, that they
exulted in riding their horses at a gallop through the streets, breaking
now and then into wild fantasies of yells, with a fantastic refrain of
echoes.
The rioters after a time disappeared. A long interval, and perhaps a
single equestrian figure would ride down the straggling street and whoop
aloud, and turn in his saddle to listen for a comrade’s response, and
then ride on.
Finally silence fell. The waning moon was high. The night was well-nigh
spent. Sundry movements of shadows on window blinds, sundry dim yellow
lights showing through them, despite the lustre of the moon, indicated
that the inhabitants considered that the drama had been played, and were
betaking themselves to bed. Alethea Sayles, crouching in the dormer
window of the cottage where the witness fee had sufficed to lodge her,
looking with dilated eyes over the little town enmeshed in the silver net
of its frosted trees, strained her ears in the silence, and exclaimed in
the anguish of suspense, “They mus’ hev tuk him out, Aunt Dely, or they
wouldn’t hev been so gamesome.”
She knew little of town ways. Had the mob been successful, the frost
itself could not vanish more silently.
Mrs. Purvine, her wise head pillowed, for the first time in her life, as
she remarked, on “town folkses’ geese,” sleepily assented.
The moon looked down in Alethea’s upturned eyes. The pine that stood
by the window tapped upon the pane. She felt as if it were a friendly
and familiar thing, here where there were so few trees; for the sight
of houses—crowded, indeed, they seemed—overwhelmed her in some sort,
and embarrassed her. It was all a-shimmer with the frost; even an empty
bird’s-nest on a bough was a miracle of delicate interweaving of silver
gleams. Her hair in its rich dishevelment fell in coils and tangles
half-way to her waist. She clasped her hands over one knee. It was an
interval of peace.
“Lethe!” said Mrs. Purvine, rousing herself. “Ain’t that gal kem ter
bed yit!” The admonition was a subterfuge. She was about to impart
information. “Lethe, ef ye b’lieve me, these hyar crazy muskrats o’ town
folks hev got _sun-bonnets ready-made_ in these hyar stores.”
The vicissitudes of the trial had been the veriest trifles to her. She
had utilized the metropolitan sojourn. She had pervaded the stores, as
women of her sort do elsewhere. Mighty little there was in these stores
that Aunt Dely had not rummaged.
“Ye tole me that afore,” said the absorbed Alethea.
Mrs. Purvine chuckled aloud as she reviewed the fact. It afforded her an
occult complacence, yet she laughed at it.
Presently she recurred to it.
“My cracky! Lethe,” she exclaimed, “_who_ makes ’em?”
And with this problem in her mind, she fell asleep among the comforts of
“town folkses’ geese.”