THE MURDER PARTNERS
A bird's-eye view of Junction City would inspire even a jaded wayfarer
to continue on and forfeit what measure of scruffy, uncouth hospitality
its lazy, primitive confines might hold for him. On high, it looked,
physically, like a monstrous spoiled egg, dropped from a great height,
and halted in its desolation and turned back by a narrow, swift river
that wrapped itself half around the town like a horseshoe. Its ill
complexion was clay-yellow, and its adornments were pitted and streaked
with a somber, sickly, worm-eaten gray. The very atmosphere that
permeated this hole between the hills was at once forbidding, repellent
and sinister. And up from the mad throat of the river, choked against
the boulders in mid-stream, there issued a warning which never died.
From eminences of the hills that crowded this town into a mere ragged
plot, the most prominent institutions observable were the Courthouse and
the graveyard, with the second look favoring the latter.
One marvelled at the population of this habitat of the dead, sprawling
on the side of a hill. Their countless pale hands thrust up out of the
ground, seemed to have frightened the river, for here it turned sharply
and dodged away between the mountains.
The Courthouse was in the upper end of the town. It was framed and
roofed with clapboards. In front, a crude attempt of hypostyle was
visible in the two huge pillars of poplar logs that supported a balcony.
The structure bellied out at the sides and oddly, at each corner of the
roof, two mansard windows projected like ears, while above all a pigmy
dome arose covered with unpainted tin. Withal, from afar the Courthouse
looked like a decrepit bull dog squatting amidst a scattered litter of
pups. The dome of this temple of justice looked up askew at the sun with
the bluish-yellow glaze of a blind eye.
Topographically, young Sap McGill and old Hank Eversole owned this town.
Morally and spiritually they were paupers, and their souls were as
pitted and yellow and gray as the town looked to be. Moreover, the
McGills "said" they owned five thousand acres in the Southpaw range
abutting Hellsfork, where they lived. Their verbal deed to these acres
was sustained by a cavalcade of rifle men and a squad of wary, creeping
bush-whackers.
Old McGill and old Eversole had fought the Lutts faction for twenty
years, but old Lutts had ever proved a most formidable antagonist, and
when he brought the fearful Johnse Hatfield up to Moon mountain as aide,
there was both renewed caution and consternation in the McGill camp.
Then, when old Cap Lutts finally killed the elder Sap McGill on
Hellsfork, one Sunday morning, they foresaw an eclipse that would bedim
their day of power and their impotent chagrin and rage was unbounded.
Where his father had left off, young Sap then took up the feud with a
re-enforced vengeance.
Then one day when the tidings came down to Junction City that the old
King of Moon mountain had been killed by a revenuer, the exultation of
the McGill faction was unconfined. Following closely upon this, a
traitor sneaked down from Hellsfork and whispered to old Eversole the
news of the arrest and spiriting away of Lem Lutts. The accrued glee of
Eversole and young Sap with this opportune turn of affairs reached a
stage that demanded expression. Wherefore, they celebrated with a public
barbecue on the Courthouse lawn, and great rejoicing was mingled with
sanguine prophecies, and the drunker Sap became the louder his avowals
to annihilate the Lutts faction.
Eversole and young Sap plotted, then, to waylay Lem Lutts as soon as he
was released from prison, and during the interval they killed three of
the Lutts' sympathizers, and took Jutt Orlick into the fold. But
throughout this apparent upperhand in the war, Sap and Eversole had an
apprehension that grew day by day, and of which they exchanged serious
comments.
The very silence of Hatfield, the man who now marshalled the Lutts
faction, was significant and alarming. If old Cap Lutts' war-name was an
awesome enunciation, the name of Johnse Hatfield was equally fearful.
His name was scoffed at in public, but secretly he was a haunting
bugbear to these murder partners.
In one respect, Hatfield was unlike old Cap Lutts. Lutts would fight so
long as the enemy was in sight and then quit. All the old man wanted was
to be left alone and unmolested. But not so with this Hatfield. He had
the reputation of following his enemy up, and he did it with a
confidence and deliberation that was little short of uncanny. He had
been literally shot to pieces in other family wars, but always survived
and always followed. It was the shadow of this relentless Nemesis that
filled Sap and Eversole with a nervous unrest. These two conspirators
not only owned practically all the realty in Junction City, but they,
moreover, owned and controlled the Judge of the Court, the County
prosecutor, and the Sheriff, and through Sap McGill old Eversole was the
dictator supreme in Junction City.
He was postmaster and the post-office occupied one corner of his
merchandise store. In the event that any citizen appeared lax or
half-hearted in his partisanship, Eversole would accost him with a
leering, soft-spoken reminder, which mild petition pounded more like the
pungent echo of a gun-crack than a voice, and the delinquent always
heeded.
In a sense, old Hank Eversole was a philanthropist of no mean
generosity. Anybody could get a tombstone out of old Hank. These
ornaments were a sort of hobby of his. If the deceased's relatives could
not pay cash, he procured one and took a mortgage on the stone. If they
rejected all overtures on the pay plan, he furnished one and placed it
at his own expense, and gave it gratis. He maintained that plain boards
were a disgrace to a well-ordered graveyard, and not meant for Junction
City.
It was the second Tuesday in May, and the sun shone brightly and the air
was scented with the mingled odors of spring. Junction City had taken on
a sudden new life. The May term of circuit court was in session and the
activity and life astir here was more animated than that which attended
a court term for many a year, for the reason that there was a murder
trial in progress.
In this festering crime-stained town, where hired assassination brewed
under contract by day, and was returnable at night with its toll of
blood, a murder was not a sensational episode, but a real murder trial
was. Here the chief conspirators, who had made the Judge and the
Prosecutor and the Sheriff, had the law by the throat; and they dumped
the offal of their deeds into subservient arms of the law, and burdened
and shackled it with collusions it dare not drop. Wherefore, the law
winked and connived with these murder lords in brazen malfeasance
inflicted upon the commonwealth, and trials assumed all the aspects of a
hurried laugh-provoking comedy, despite the grim fact that its elements
involved human life. The swearing out of warrants had long since fallen
obsolete. In times past, charges had been made and warrants issued, but
when the day of trial arrived, there were no witnesses at hand, and the
prosecuting witness was usually the farthest distant.
Thus, it transpired that the trial which opened the circuit court at
Junction City on this May day was to the denizens a memorable one.
Although the trial itself, which was never finished, was not a factor in
what followed, still, this trial was remembered as having opened a day
that ended with a scrambled, tragic event which ground the
McGill-Eversole combination to a pulp, and marked an era of new
political and social ethics in Junction City.
Three months since a young German named Daum, and hailing from below,
made his optimistic appearance in the town. After alighting upon a
four-room shack that seemingly suited his wife, he cast about to locate
the landlord. As there was only one landlord in Junction City, Daum
found his way into old Hank Eversole's store. Daum was even more than
loquacious--he was effervescent, and in no time old Hank had pumped him
dry. Daum claimed that he would receive ten thousand dollars from
Germany six months hence,--that he wished to fish and hunt and live as
cheaply as possible until his money arrived.
Old Eversole finally decided that the newcomer was simply a harmless,
dumb Dutchman, and before Daum left the store, old Hank had given him a
receipt for six months' rent paid in advance. The German paid cash for
his groceries at Eversole's store, and hunted and fished to his heart's
content, while his young, round-faced wife made baby clothes on the
porch.
Withal, Daum was not an undesirable citizen until the end of the first
month, when apparently tiring of fishing and looking at the hills and in
response to his native thrift, he took to himself a quick notion to make
some money. A week after this economic inspiration the energetic German
had converted the front room of his shack into a general store.
Notwithstanding that the display he scattered on his porch was a
melancholy exhibit compared to that of old Eversole, it was sufficiently
competitive to lead old Hank's footsteps directly to Daum's
establishment. Old Eversole was not as irate as his temperament might
suggest. He was, in truth, stirred with a deep amusement as he wended
his way Daumward and pictured how this presuming German would leave the
town in haste after this first interview.
When Daum understood the purport of this un-neighborly call, he
explained that he had never intended to remain in Junction City a day
after he obtained his money from Germany, but protested that, insomuch
as he had paid his rent for six months and being in a free land, he
would do business until that time.
The interview opened mildly enough, but ended with a mandate from old
Hank, commanding Daum to close up his store within the limit of six
hours. Whereupon Daum grew very angry, and as old Eversole swaggered
out, Daum hurled his determination and sentiments after old Hank in a
few wrathful, terse words.
"Mit you I vont nuddings--I standt py mine piziness--to hell mit you
also--ulch!"
At daybreak the following morning Daum's wife was in her garden with a
sprinkling can when she espied one Steve Barlow, a loafer around
Eversole's store, sneaking out of her woodshed and slipping away along
the picket fence hemming the potato patch. She pondered curiously upon
the man's actions and, her suspicions giving way to fear, she returned
to the house, but Daum had already gone after his usual morning fry of
fish. The wife, then impelled by an apprehension that grew momentarily,
followed after him; and found her husband stark dead at the end of the
street.
After the burial, the widow departed from Junction City, fully bent upon
devoting her forthcoming estate to the trailing down of her husband's
slayer. The day she left old Eversole sent word by Plunkett, his
"clerk," that he would erect a tombstone for her husband, and that she
could pay for it later or not, just as she chose. Ten days later, the
widow Daum appeared in Junction City accompanied by a lawyer named
Logan. Logan was a man with a state-wide reputation as a criminal
practitioner, and old Hank Eversole pricked up both his ears.
Logan proceeded to the Sheriff's office with his client and swore a
warrant for Steve Barlow. The warrant was issued with reluctance; the
entire court personnel being loud in their defense of Barlow. But there
was a grim directness and aggression about this Blue-grass lawyer, that
with his inconceivable temerity and a reputation which awed even their
callow senses, they pretended at last to agree to catch and try Barlow.
Logan visited the Courthouse the next day and found the Eversole-McGill
faction had done just what he thought they would do, and precisely what
he wanted them to do. Logan's youth had been spent in the hills, and he
knew the proclivities of these mountain men. They had hedged Barlow with
a formidable and insurmountable alibi.
Logan then made a concession, and stated that while he meant to try the
case, he would suggest that Barlow, if he be apprehended, be admitted to
bail. He said that he realized that this procedure was a trifle
irregular in such cases, but that if the townspeople were so morally
certain that the alibi would stand, he did not wish to impose the
hardship of several weeks in jail upon the defendant.
To this generous proposition they agreed with pleasure and alacrity. And
the next day Steve Barlow was "apprehended" and quickly released,
pending trial the second Tuesday in May. Then the astute Logan took to
hunting, and incidentally watching for a chance to catch Barlow alone.
He had acquainted himself with Barlow's history and felt that he could
wean him over. Barlow was an ignorant vagabond with no permanent home,
living from hand to mouth, and a crinkling tool in the hands of old
Eversole.
After four days' prowling around the adjacent hills, Logan surprised
Barlow in a by-path across the river. The lawyer opened the interview by
handing Barlow a new twenty-dollar gold certificate, which the lout took
eagerly with an idiotic grin, before he even inquired what it was for,
and Logan knew he had him.
At the end of an hour's persuasion Barlow confessed and agreed to make a
clean breast of the affair in court. Logan in turn promised to give him
one hundred dollars in money, and help him out of town.
Barlow said that old Hank Eversole gave him ten dollars for killing
Daum, and promised him a month's board beside. That night Logan left
town and took Barlow with him. Just what became of Steve Barlow was a
matter of divided conjecture to the idlers around Eversole's store. Some
'lowed that Steve had just "mosied" off and would be on hand trial day.
Others ventured that he had "done leapt his bail."