“Hannibal!” the judge's voice and manner were rather stern. “Hannibal, a man rode by here last night on a big bay horse. He said he was looking for a boy about ten years old—a boy with a bundle and rifle.” There was an awful pause. Hannibal's heart stood still for a brief instant, then it began to beat with terrific thumps against his ribs. “Who was that man, Hannibal?”
“I—please, I don't know—” gasped the child.
“Hannibal, who was that man?” repeated the judge.
“It were Captain Murrell.” The judge regarded him with a look of great steadiness. He saw his small face go white, he saw the look of abject terror in his eyes. The judge raised his fist and brought it down with a great crash on the table, so that the breakfast dishes leaped and rattled. “We don't know any boy ten years old with a rifle and bundle!” he said.
“Please—you won't let him take me away, judge I want to stop with you!” cried Hannibal. He slipped from his chair, and passing about the table, seized the judge by the hand. The judge was visibly affected.
“No!” he roared, with a great oath. “He shan't have you—I'll see him in the farthest corner of hell first! Is he kin to you?”
“No,” said Hannibal.
“Took you to raise, did he—and abused you—infernal hypocrite!” cried the judge with righteous wrath.
“He tried to get me away from my Uncle Bob. He's been following us since we crossed the mountains.”
“Where is your Uncle Bob?”
“He's dead.” And the child began to weep bitterly. Much puzzled, the judge regarded him in silence for a moment, then bent and lifted him into his lap.
“There, my son—” he said soothingly. “Now you tell me when he died, and all about it.”
“He were killed. It were only yesterday, and I can't forget him! I don't want to—but it hurts—it hurts terrible!” Hannibal buried his head in the judge's shoulder and sobbed aloud. Presently his small hands stole about the judge's neck, and that gentleman experienced a strange thrill of pleasure.
“Tell me how he died, Hannibal,” he urged gently. In a voice broken by sobs the child began the story of their flight, a confused narrative, which the judge followed with many a puzzled shake of the head. But as he reached his climax—that cry he had heard at the tavern, the men in the lane with their burden—he became more and more coherent and his ideas clothed themselves in words of dreadful simplicity and directness. The judge shuddered. “Can such things be?” he murmured at last.
“You won't let him take me?”
“I never unsay my words,” said the judge grandly. “With God's help I'll be the instrument for their destruction.” He frowned with a preternatural severity. Eh—if he could turn a trick like that, it would pull him up! There would be no more jeers and laughter.
What credit and standing it would give him! His thoughts slipped along this fresh channel. What a prosecution he would conduct—what a whirlwind of eloquence he would loose! He began to breathe hard. His name should go from end to end of the state! No man could be great without opportunity—for years he had known this—but here was opportunity at last! Then he remembered what Mahaffy had told him of the man on the raft. This Slosson's tavern was probably on the upper waters of the Elk. Yancy had been thrown in the river and had been picked up in a dying condition. “Hannibal,” he said, “Solomon Mahaffy, who was here last night, told me he saw down at the river landing, a man who had been fished up out of the Elk—a man who had been roughly handled.”
“Were it my Uncle Bob?” cried Hannibal, lifting a swollen face to his.
“Dear lad, I don't know,” said the judge sympathetically. “Some people on a raft had picked him up out of the river. He was unconscious and no one knew him. He was apparently a stranger in these parts.”
“It were Uncle Bob! It were Uncle Bob—I know it were my Uncle Bob! I must go find him!” and Hannibal slipped from the judge's lap and ran for his rifle and bundle.
“Stop a bit!” cried the judge. “He was taken on past here, and he was badly injured. Now, if it was your Uncle Bob, he'll come back the moment he is able to travel. Meantime, you must remain under my protection while we investigate this man Slosson.”
But alas—that thoroughfare which is supposed to be paved exclusively with good resolutions, had benefited greatly by Slocum Price's labors in the past, and he was destined to toil still in its up-keep. He borrowed the child's money and spent it, and if any sense of shame smote his torpid conscience, he hid it manfully. Not so Mr. Mahaffy; for while he profited by his friend's act, he told that gentleman just what he thought of him with insulting candor. On the eighth day there was sobriety for the pair. Deep gloom visited Mr. Mahaffy, and the judge was a prey to melancholy.
It was Saturday, and in Pleasantville a jail-raising was in progress. During all the years of its corporate dignity the village had never boasted any building where the evil-doer could be placed under restraint; hence had arisen its peculiar habit of dealing with crime; but a leading citizen had donated half an acre of ground lying midway between the town and the river landing as a site for the proposed structure, and the scattered population of the region had assembled for the raising. Nor was Pleasantville unprepared to make immediate use of the jail, since the sheriff had in custody a free negro who had knifed another free negro and was awaiting trial at the next term of court.
“We don't want to get there too early,” explained the judge, as they quitted the cabin. “We want to miss the work, but be on hand for the celebration.”
“I suppose we may confidently look to you to favor us with a few eloquent words?” said Mr. Mahaffy.
“And why not, Solomon?” asked the judge.
“Why not, indeed!” echoed Mr. Mahaffy.
The opportunity he craved was not denied him. The crowd was like most southwestern crowds of the period, and no sooner did the judge appear than there were clamorous demands for a speech. He cast a glance of triumph at Mahaffy, and nimbly mounted a convenient stump. He extolled the climate of middle Tennessee, the unsurpassed fertility of the soil; he touched on the future that awaited Pleasantville; he apostrophized the jail; this simple structure of logs in the shadow of the primeval woods was significant of their love of justice and order; it was a suitable place for the detention of a citizen of a great republic; it was no mediaeval dungeon, but a forest-embowered retreat where, barring mosquitoes and malaria, the party under restraint would be put to no needless hardship; he would have the occasional companionship of the gentlemanly sheriff; his friends, with such wise and proper restrictions as the law saw fit to impose, could come and impart the news of the day to him through the chinks of the logs.
“I understand you have dealt in a hasty fashion with one or two horse-thieves,” he continued. “Also with a gambler who was put ashore here from a river packet and subsequently became involved in a dispute with a late citizen of this place touching the number of aces in a pack of cards. It is not for me to criticize! What I may term the spontaneous love of justice is the brightest heritage of a free people. It is this same commendable ability to acquit ourselves of our obligations that is making us the wonder of the world! But don't let us forget the law—of which it is an axiom, that it is not the severity of punishment, but the certainty of it, that holds the wrong-doer in check! With this safe and commodious asylum the plow line can remain the exclusive aid to agriculture. If a man murders, curb your natural impulse! Give him a fair trial, with eminent counsel!” The judge tried not to look self-conscious when he said this. “If he is found guilty, I still say, don't lynch him! Why? Because by your hasty act you deny the public the elevating and improving spectacle of a legal execution!” When the applause had died out, a lank countryman craning his neck for a sight of the sheriff, bawled out over the heads of the crowd:
“Where's your nigger? We want to put him in here!”
“I reckon he's gone fishin'. I never seen the beat of that nigger to go fishin',” said the sheriff.
“Whoop! Ain't you goin' to put him in here?” yelled the countryman.
“It's a mighty lonely spot for a nigger,” said the sheriff doubtingly.
“Lonely? Well, suppose he ups and lopes out of this?”
“You don't know that nigger,” rejoined the sheriff warmly. “He ain't missed a meal since I had him in custody. Just as regular as the clock strikes he's at the back door. Good habits—why, that darky is a lesson to most white folks!”
“I don't care a cuss about that nigger, but what's the use of building a jail if a body ain't goin' to use it?”
“Well, there's some sense in that,” agreed the sheriff.
“There's a whole heap of sense in it!”
“I suggest”—the speaker was a young lawyer from the next county—“I suggest that a committee be appointed to wait on the nigger at the steamboat landing and acquaint him with the fact that with his assistance we wish completely to furnish the jail.”
“I protest—” cried the judge. “I protest—” he repeated vigorously. “Pride of race forbids that I should be a party to the degradation of the best of civilization! Is your jail to be christened to its high office by a nigger? Is this to be the law's apotheosis? No, sir! No nigger is worthy the honor of being the first prisoner here!” This was a new and striking idea. The crowd regarded the judge admiringly. Certainly here was a man of refined feeling.
“That's just the way I feel about it,” said the sheriff. “If I'd athought there was any call for him I wouldn't have let him go fishing, I'd have kept him about.”
“Oh, let the nigger fish—he has powerful luck. What's he usin', Sheriff; worms or minnies?”
“Worms,” said the sheriff shortly.
Presently the crowd drifted away in the direction of the tavern. Hannibal meantime had gone down to the river. He haunted its banks as though he expected to see his Uncle Bob appear any moment. The judge and Mahaffy had mingled with the others in the hope of free drinks, but in this hope there lurked the germ of a bitter disappointment. There was plenty of drinking, but they were not invited to join in this pleasing rite, and after a period of great mental anguish Mahaffy parted with the last stray coin in the pocket of his respectable black trousers, and while his flask was being filled the judge indulged in certain winsome gallantries with the fat landlady.
“La, Judge Price, how you do run on!” she said with a coquettish toss of her curls.
“That's the charm of you, ma'am,” said the judge. He leaned across the bar and, sinking his voice to a husky whisper, asked, “Would it be perfectly convenient for you to extend me a limited credit?”
“Now, Judge Price, you know a heap better than to ask me that!” she answered, shaking her head.
“No offense, ma'am,” said the judge, hiding his disappointment, and with Mahaffy he quitted the bar.
“Why don't you marry the old girl? You could drink yourself to death in six months,” said Mahaffy. “That would be a speculation worth while—and while you live you could fondle those curls!”
“Maybe I'll be forced to it yet,” responded the judge with gloomy pessimism.
With the filling of Mahaffy's flask the important event of the day was past, and both knew it was likely to retain its preeminence for a terrible and indefinite period; a thought that enriched their thirst as it increased their gravity while they were traversing the stretch of dusty road that lay between the cavern and the judge's shanty. When they had settled themselves in their chairs before the door, Mahaffy, who was notably jealous of his privileges, drew the cork from the flask and took the first pull at its contents. The judge counted the swallows as registered by that useful portion of Mahaffy's anatomy known as his Adam's apple. After a breathless interval, Mahaffy detached himself from the flask and civilly passing the cuff of his coat about its neck, handed it over to the judge. In the unbroken silence that succeeded the flask passed swiftly from hand to hand, at length Mahaffy held it up to the light. It was two-thirds empty, and a sigh stole from between his thin lips. The judge reached out a tremulous hand. He was only too familiar with his friend's distressing peculiarities.
“Not yet!” he begged thickly.
“Why not?” demanded Mahaffy fiercely. “Is it your liquor or mine?” He quitted his chair end stalked to the well where he filled the flask with water. Infinitely disgusted, the judge watched the sacrilege. Mahaffy resumed his chair and again the flask went its rounds.
“It ain't so bad,” said the judge after a time, but with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
“Were you in shape to put anything better than water into it, Mr. Price?” The judge winced. He always winced at that “Mr.”
“Well, I wouldn't serve myself such a trick as that,” he said with decision. “When I take liquor, it's one thing; and when I want water, it's another.”
“It is, indeed,” agreed Mahaffy.
“I drink as much clear water as is good for a man of my constitution,” said the judge combatively. “My talents are wasted here,” he resumed, after a little pause. “I've brought them the blessings of the law, but what does it signify!”
“Why did you ever come here?” Mahaffy spoke sharply.
“I might ask the same question of you, and in the same offensive tone,” said the judge.
“May I ask, not wishing to take a liberty, were you always the same old pauper you've been since I've known you?” inquired Mahaffy. The judge maintained a stony silence.
The heat deepened in the heart of the afternoon. The sun, a ball of fire, slipped back of the tree-tops. Thick shadows stole across the stretch of dusty road. Off in the distance there was the sound of cowbell. Slowly these came nearer and nearer—as the golden light slanted, sifting deeper and deeper into the woods.
They could see the crowd that came and went about the tavern, they caught the distant echo of its mirth.
“Common—quite common,” said the judge with somber melancholy.
“I didn't see anything common,” said Mahaffy sourly. “The drinks weren't common by a long sight.”
“I referred to the gathering in its social aspect, Solomon,” explained the judge; “the illiberal spirit that prevailed, which, I observe, did not escape you.”
“Skunks!” said Mahaffy.
“Not a man present had the public spirit to set 'em up,” lamented the judge. “They drank in pairs, and I'd blistered my throat at their damn jail-raising! What sort of a fizzle would it have been if I hadn't been on hand to impart distinction to the occasion?”
“I don't begrudge 'em their liquor,” said Mahaffy with acid dignity.
“I do,” interrupted the judge. “I hope it's poison to 'em.
“It will be in the long run, if it's any comfort to you to know it.”
“It's no comfort, it's not near quick enough,” said the judge relentlessly. The sudden noisy clamor of many voices, highpitched and excited, floated out to them under the hot sky. “I wonder—” began the judge, and paused as he saw the crowd stream into the road before the tavern. Then a cloud of dust enveloped it, a cloud of dust that came from the trampling of many pairs of feet, and that swept toward them, thick and impenetrable, and no higher than a tall man's head in the lifeless air. “I wonder if we missed anything,” continued the judge, finishing what he had started to say.
The score or more of men were quite near, and the judge and Mahaffy made out the tall figure of the sheriff in the lead. And then the crowd, very excited, very dusty, very noisy and very hot, flowed into the judge's front yard. For a brief moment that gentleman fancied Pleasantville had awakened to a fitting sense of its obligation to him and that it was about to make amends for its churlish lack of hospitality. He rose from his chair, and with a splendid florid gesture, swept off his hat.
“It's the pussy fellow!” cried a voice.
“Oh, shut up—don't you think I know him?” retorted the sheriff tartly.
“Gentlemen—” began the judge blandly.
“Get the well-rope!”
The judge was rather at loss properly to interpret these varied remarks. He was not long left in doubt. The sheriff stepped to his side and dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Mr. Slocum Price, or whatever your name is, your little game is up!”
“Get the well-rope! Oh, hell—won't some one get the well-rope?” The voice rose into a wail of entreaty.
The judge's eyes, rather startled, slid around in their sockets. Clearly something was wrong—but what—what?
“Ain't he bold?” it was a woman's voice this time, and the fat landlady, her curls awry and her plump breast heaving tumultuously, gained a place in the forefront of the crowd.
“Dear madam, this is an unexpected pleasure!” said the judge, with his hand upon his heart.
“Don't you make your wicked old sheep's eyes at me, you brazen thing!” cried the lady.
“You're wanted,” said the sheriff grimly, still keeping his hand on the judge's shoulder.
“For what?” demanded the judge thickly. The sheriff had no time in which to answer.
“I want my money!” shrieked the landlady.
“Your money—Mrs. Walker, you amaze me!” The judge drew himself up haughtily, in genuine astonishment.
“I want my money!” repeated Mrs. Walker in even more piercing tones.
“I am not aware that I owe you anything, madam. Thank God, I hold your receipted bill of recent date,” answered the judge with chilling dignity.
“Good money—not this worthless trash!” she shook a bill under his nose. The judge recognized it as the one of which he had despoiled Hannibal.
“You have been catched passing counterfeit,” said the sheriff. A light broke on the judge, a light that dazzled and stunned. An officious and impatient gentleman tossed a looped end of the well-rope about his neck and the crowd yelled excitedly. This was something like—it had a taste for the man-hunt! The sheriff snatched away the rope and dealt the officious gentleman a savage blow on the chin that sent him staggering backward into the arms of his friends.
“Now, see here, now—I'm going to arrest this old faller! I am going to put him in jail, and I ain't going to have no nonsense—do you hear me?” he expostulated.
“I can explain—” cried the judge.
“Make him give me my money!” wailed Mrs Walker.
“Jezebel!” roared the judge, in a passion of rage.
“Ca'm's the word, or you'll get 'em started!” whispered the sheriff. The judge looked fearfully around. At his side stood Mahaffy, a yellow pallor splotching his thin cheeks. He seemed to be holding himself there by an effort.
“Speak to them, Solomon—speak to them—you know how I came by the money! Speak to them—you know I am innocent!” cried the judge, clutching his friend by the arm. Mahaffy opened his thin lips, but the crowd drowned his voice in a roar.
“He's his partner—”
“There's no evidence against him,” said the sheriff.
A tall fellow, in a fringed hunting-shirt, shook a long finger under Mahaffy's aquiline nose.
“You scoot—that's what—you make tracks! And if we ever see your ugly face about here again, we'll—”
“You'll what?” inquired Mahaffy.
“We'll fix you out with feathers that won't molt, that's what!”
Mr. Mahaffy seemed to hesitate. His lean hands opened and closed, and he met the eyes of the crowd with a bitter, venomous stare. Some one gave him a shove and he staggered forward a step, snapping out a curse. Before he could recover himself the shove was repeated.
“Lope on out of here!” yelled the tall fellow, who had first challenged his right to remain in Pleasantville or its environs. As the crowd fell apart to make way for him, willing hands were extended to give him the needed impetus, and without special volition of his own.
Mahaffy was hurried toward the road. His hat was knocked flat on his head—he turned with an angry snarl, the very embodiment of hate—but again he was thrust forward. And then, somehow, his walk became a run and the crowd started after him with delighted whoopings. Once more, and for the last time, he faced about, giving the judge a hopeless, despairing glance. His tormentors were snatching up sods and stones and he had no choice. He turned, his long strides taking him swiftly over the ground, with the air full of missiles at his back.
Before he had gone a hundred yards he abandoned the road and, turning off across an unfenced field, ran toward the woods and swampy bottom. Twenty men were in chase behind him. The judge was the sheriff's prisoner—that official had settled that point—but Mr. Mahaffy was common property, it was his cruel privilege to furnish excitement; his keen rage was almost equal to the fear that urged him on. Then the woods closed about him. His long legs, working tirelessly, carried him over fallen logs and through tall tangled thickets, the voices behind him growing more and more distant as he ran.
That would unquestionably have been the end of Bob Yancy when he was shot out into the muddy waters of the Elk River, had not Mr. Richard Keppel Cavendish, variously known as Long-Legged Dick, and Chills-and-Fever Cavendish, of Lincoln County, in the state of Tennessee, some months previously and after unprecedented mental effort on his part, decided that Lincoln County was no place for him. When he had established this idea firmly in his own mind and in the mind of Polly, his wife, he set about solving the problem of transportation.
Mr. Cavendish's paternal grandparent had drifted down the Holston and Tennessee; and Mr. Cavendish's father, in his son's youth, had poled up the Elk. Mr. Cavendish now determined to float down the Elk to its juncture with the Tennessee, down the Tennessee to the Ohio, and if need be, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and keep drifting until he found some spot exactly suited to his taste. Temperamentally, he was well adapted to drifting. No conception of vicarious activity could have been more congenial.
With this end in view he had toiled through late winter and early spring, building himself a raft on which to transport his few belongings and his numerous family; there were six little Cavendishes, and they ranged in years from four to eleven; there was in addition the baby, who was always enumerated separately. This particular infant Mr. Cavendish said he wouldn't take a million dollars for. He usually added feelingly that he wouldn't give a piece of chalk for another one.
June found him aboard his raft with all his earthly possessions bestowed about him, awaiting the rains and freshets that were to waft him effortless into a newer country where he should have a white man's chance. At last the rains came, and he cast off from the bank at that unsalubrious spot where his father had elected to build his cabin on a strip of level bottom subject to periodic inundation. Wishing fully to profit by the floods and reach the big water without delay, Cavendish ran the raft twenty-four hours at a stretch, sleeping by day while Polly managed the great sweep, only calling him when some dangerous bit of the river was to be navigated. Thus it happened that as Murrell and Slosson were dragging Yancy down the lane, Cavendish was just rounding a bend in the Elk, a quarter of a mile distant. Leaning loosely against the long handle of his sweep, he was watching the lane of bright water that ran between the black shadows cast by the trees on either bank. He was in shirt and trousers, barefoot and bareheaded, and his face, mild and contemplative, wore an expression of dreamy contentment.
Suddenly its expression changed. He became alert and watchful. He had heard a dull splash. Thinking that some tree had been swept into the flood, he sought to pierce the darkness that lay along the shore. Five or six minutes passed as the raft glided along without sound. He was about to relapse into his former attitude of listless ease when he caught sight of some object in the eddy that swept alongside. Mr. Cavendish promptly detached himself from the handle of the sweep and ran to the edge of the raft.
“Good Lord—what's that!” he gasped, but he already knew it was a face, livid and blood-streaked. Dropping on his knees he reached out a pair of long arms and made a dexterous grab, and his fingers closed on the collar of Yancy's shirt. “Neighbor, I certainly have got you!” said Cavendish, between his teeth. He drew Yancy close alongside the raft, and, slipping a hand under each arm, pulled him clear of the water. The swift current swept the raft on down the stream. It rode fairly in the center of the lane of light, but no eye had observed its passing. Mr. Cavendish stood erect and stared down at the blood-stained face, then he dropped on his knees again and began a hurried examination of the still figure. “There's a little life here—not much, but some—you was well worth fishing up!” he said approvingly, after a brief interval. “Polly!” he called, raising his voice.
This brought Mrs. Cavendish from one of the two cabins that occupied the center of the raft. She was a young woman, still very comely, though of a matronly plumpness. She was in her nightgown, and when she caught sight of Yancy she uttered a shriek and fled back into the shanty.
“I declare, Dick, you might ha' told a body you wa'n't alone!” she said reproachfully.
Her cry had aroused the other denizens of the raft. The tow heads of the six little Cavendishes rose promptly from a long bolster in the smaller of the two shanties, and as promptly six little Cavendishes, each draped in a single non-committal garment, apparently cut by one pattern and not at all according to the wearer's years or length of limb, tumbled forth from their shelter.
“Sho', Polly, he's senseless! But you dress and come here quick. Now, you young folks, don't you tetch him!” for the six small Cavendishes, excited beyond measure, were crowding and shoving for a nearer sight of Yancy. They began to pelt their father with questions. Who was it? Sho', in the river? Sho', all cut up like that—who'd cut him? Had he hurt himself? Was he throwed in? When did pop fish him out? Was he dead? Why did he lay like that and not move or speak—sho'! This and much more was flung at Mr. Cavendish all in one breath, and each eager questioner seized him by the hand, the dangling sleeve of his shirt, or his trousers—they clutched him from all sides. “I never seen such a family!” said Mr. Cavendish helplessly. “Now, you-all shut up, or I 'low I'll lay into you!”
Mrs. Cavendish's appearance created a diversion in his favor. The six rushed on her tumultously. They seized her hands or struggled for a fragment of her skirt to hold while they poured out their tale. Pop had fished up a man—he'd been throwed in the river! Pop didn't know if he was dead or not—he was all cut and bloody.
“I declare, I've a mind to skin you if you don't keep still! Miss Constance,” Polly addressed her eldest child, “I'm surprised at you! You might be a heathen savage for all you got on your back—get into some duds this instant!” Cavendish was on his knees again beside Yancy, and Polly, by a determined effort, rid herself of the children. “Why, he's a grand-looking man, ain't he?” she cried. “La, what a pity!”
“You can feel his heart beat, and he's bleeding some,” said Cavendish.
“Let me see—just barely flutters, don't it? Henry, go mind the sweep and see we don't get aground! Keppel, you start a fire and warm some water! Connie, you tear up my other petticoat for bandages now, stir around, all of you!” And then began a period of breathless activity. They first lifted Yancy into the circle of illumination cast by the fire Keppel had started on the hearth of flat stones before the shanties. Then, with Constance to hold a pan of warm water, Mrs. Cavendish deftly bathed the gaping wound in Yancy's shoulder where Murrell had driven his knife. This she bandaged with strips torn from her petticoat. Next she began on the ragged cut left by Slosson's club.
“He's got a right to be dead!” said Cavendish.
“Get the shears, Dick—I must snip away some of his hair.”
All this while the four half-naked youngest Cavendishes, very still now, stood about the stone hearth in the chill dawn and watched their mother's surgery with a breathless interest. Only the outcast Henry at the sweep ever and anon lifted his voice between sobs of mingled rage and disappointment, and demanded what was doing.
“Think he is going to die, Polly?” whispered Cavendish at length. Their heads, hers very black and glossy, his very blond, were close together as they bent above the injured man.
“I never say a body's going to die until he's dead,” said Polly. “He's still breathing, and a Christian has got to do what they can. Don't you think you ought to tie up?”
“The freshet's leaving us. I'll run until we hit the big water down by Pleasantville, and then tie up,” said Cavendish.
“I reckon we'd better lift him on to one of the beds—get his wet clothes off and wrap him up warm,” said Polly.
“Oh, put him in our bed!” cried all the little Cavendishes.
And Yancy was borne into the smaller of the two shanties, where presently his bandaged head rested on the long communal pillow. Then his wet clothes were hung up to dry along with a portion of the family wash which fluttered on a rope stretched between the two shanties.
The raft had all the appearance of a cabin dooryard. There was, in addition to the two shelters of bark built over a light framework of poles, a pen which housed a highly domestic family of pigs, while half a dozen chickens enjoyed a restricted liberty. With Yancy disposed of, the regular family life was resumed. It was sun-up now. The little Cavendishes, reluctant but overpersuaded, had their faces washed alongside and were dressed by Connie, while Mrs. Cavendish performed the same offices for the baby. Then there was breakfast, from which Mr. Cavendish rose yawning to go to bed, where, before dropping off to sleep, he played with the baby. This left Mrs. Cavendish in full command of her floating dooryard. She smoked a reflective pipe, watching the river between puffs, and occasionally lending a hand at the sweeps. Later the family wash engaged her. It had neither beginning nor end, but serialized itself from day to day. Connie was already proficient at the tubs. It was a knack she was in no danger of losing.
Keppel and Henry took turns at the sweeps, while the three smaller children began to manifest a love for the water they had not seemed to possess earlier in the day. They played along the edge of the raft, always in imminent danger of falling in, always being called back, or seized, just in time to prevent a catastrophe. This ceaseless activity on their part earned them much in the way of cuffings, chastisements which Mrs. Cavendish administered with no great spirit.
“Drat you, why don't you go look at the pore gentleman instead of posterin' a body 'most to death!” she demanded at length, and they stole off on tiptoe to stare at Yancy. Presently Richard ran to his mother's side.
“Come quick—he's mutterin' and mumblin' and moving his head!” he cried. It was as the child said. Yancy had roused from his heavy stupor. Words almost inaudible and quite inarticulate were issuing from his lips and there was a restless movement of his head on the pillow.
“He 'pears powerful distressed about something,” said Mrs. Cavendish. “I reckon I'd better give him a little stimulant now.”
While she was gone for the whisky, Connie, who had squatted down beside the bed, touched Yancy's hand which lay open. Instantly his fingers closed about hers and he was silent; the movement of his head ceased abruptly; but when she sought to withdraw her hand he began to murmur again.
“I declare, what he wants is some one to sit beside him!” said Mrs. Cavendish, who had returned with the whisky, a few drops of which she managed to force between Yancy's lips. All the rest of that day some one of the children sat beside the wounded man, who was quiet and satisfied just as long as there was a small hand for him to hold.
“He must be a family man,” observed Mr. Cavendish when Polly told him of this. “We'll tie up at Pleasantville landing and learn who he is.”
“He had ought to have a doctor to look at them cuts of his,” said Mrs. Cavendish.
It was late afternoon when the landing was reached. Half a score of men were loafing about the woodyard on shore. Mr. Cavendish made fast to a blasted tree, then he climbed the bank; the men regarding him incuriously as he approached.
“Howdy,” said Cavendish genially.
“Howdy,” they answered.
“Where might I find the nearest doctor?” inquired Cavendish.
“Within about six foot of you,” said one of the group.
“Meaning yourself?”
“Meaning myself.”
Briefly Cavendish told the story of Yancy's rescue.
“Now, Doc, I want you should cast an eye over the way we've dressed his cuts, and I want the rest of you to come and take a look at him and tell who he is and where he belongs,” he said in conclusion.
“I'll know him if he belongs within forty miles of here in any direction,” said the doctor. But he shook his head when his eye rested on Yancy. “Never saw him,” he said briefly.
“How about them bandages, Doc?” demanded Cavendish.
“Oh, I reckon they'll do,” replied the doctor indifferently.
“Will he live?”
“I can't say. You'll know all about that inside the next forty-eight hours. Better let the rest have a look.”
“Just feel of them bandages—sho', I got money in my pants!” Mr. Cavendish was rapidly losing his temper, yet he controlled himself until each man had taken a look at Yancy; but always with the same result—a shake of the head. “I reckon I can leave him here?” Cavendish asked, when the last man had looked and turned away.
“Leave him here—why?” demanded the doctor slowly.
“Because I'm going on, that's why. I'm headed for downstream, and he ain't in any sort of shape to say whether he wants to go or stop,” explained Cavendish.
“You picked him up, didn't you?” asked one of the men.
“I certainly did,” said Cavendish.
“Well, I reckon if you're so anxious for him to stay hereabout, you'd better stop, yourself,” said the owner of the woodyard. “There ain't a house within two miles of here but mine, and he don't go there!”
“You're a healthy lot, you are!” said Cavendish. “I wonder your largeness of heart ain't ruptured your wishbones long ago!” So saying, he retired to the stern of his raft and leaned against the sweep-handle, apparently lost in thought. His visitors climbed the bank and reestablished themselves on the wood-ranks.
Presently Mr. Cavendish lifted his voice and addressed Polly and the six little Cavendishes at the other end of the raft. He asserted that he was the only well-born man within a radius of perhaps a hundred miles—he excepted no one. He knew who his father and mother were, and they had been legally married—he seemed to infer that this was not always the case. Mr. Cavendish glanced toward the shore, then he lifted his voice again, giving it as his opinion that he was the only Christian seen in those parts in the last fifty years. He offered to fight any gentleman who felt disposed to challenge this assertion. He sprang suddenly aloft, knocked his bare heels together and uttered an ear-piercing whoop. He subsided and gazed off into the red eye of the sun which was slipping back of the trees. Presently he spoke again. He offered to lick any gentleman who felt aggrieved by his previous remarks, for fifty cents, for a drink of whisky, for a chew of tobacco, for nothing—with one hand tied behind him! He sprang aloft, cracked his heels together as before and crowed insultingly; then he subsided into silence. An instant later he appeared stung by the acutest pangs of remorse. In a cringing tone he begged Polly to forgive him for bringing her to such a place. He bewailed that they had risked pollution by allowing any inhabitant of that region to set foot on the raft—he feared for the innocent minds of their children, and he implored her pardon. Perhaps it was better that they should cast off at once—unless one of the gentlemen on shore felt himself insulted, in which event he would remain to fight.
Then as he slowly worked the raft out toward the middle of the stream, he repeated all his former remarks, punctuating them with frequent whoops. He recapitulated the terms on which he could be induced to fight-fifty cents, a drink of liquor, a chew of tobacco, nothing! His shouts became fainter and fainter as the raft was swept down-stream, and finally died away in the distance.
The sheriff had brought the judge's supper. He reported that the crowd was dispersing, and that on the whole public sentiment was not particularly hostile; indeed, he went so far as to say there existed a strong undercurrent of satisfaction that the jail should have so speedily justified itself. Moreover, there was a disposition to exalt the judge as having furnished the crowning touch to the day's pleasure.
“I reckon, sir, they'd have felt obliged to string you up if there wa'n't no jail,” continued the sheriff lazily from the open door where he had seated himself. “I don't say there ain't them who don't maintain you had ought to be strung up as it is, but people are funny, sir; the majority talk like they might wish to keep you here indefinite. There's no telling when we'll get another prisoner. Tomorrow the blacksmith will fix some iron bars to your window so folks can look in and see you. It will give a heap more air to the place—”
“Unless I do get more air, you will not be troubled long by me!” declared the judge in a tone of melancholy conviction.
The building was intolerably hot, the advantages of ventilation having been a thing the citizens of Pleasantville had overlooked. But the judge was a reasonable soul; he was disposed to accept his immediate personal discomfort with a fine true philosophy; also, hope was stirring in his heart. Hope was second nature with him, for had he not lived all these years with the odds against him?
“You do sweat some, don't you? Oh, well, a man can stand a right smart suffering from heat like this and not die. It's the sun that's dangerous,” remarked the sheriff consolingly. “And you had ought to suffer, sir! that's what folks are sent to jail for,” he added.
“You will kindly bear in mind, sir, that I have been convicted of no crime!” retorted the judge.
“If you hadn't been so blamed particular you might have had company; politest darky you would meet anywhere. Well, sir, I didn't think the boss orator of the day would be the first prisoner—the joke certainly is on you!”
“I never saw such bloody-minded ruffians! Keep them out and keep me in—all I ask is to vindicate myself in the eyes of the world,” said the judge.
“Well,” began the sheriff severely, “ain't it enough to make 'em bloody-minded? Any one of 'em might have taken your money and got stuck. Just to think of that is what hets them up.” He regarded the judge with a glance of displeasure. “I hate to see a man so durn unreasonable in his p'int of view. And you picked a lady—a widow-lady—say, ain't you ashamed?”
“Well, sir, what's going to happen to me?” demanded the judge angrily.
“I reckon you'll be tried. I reckon the law will deal with you—that is, if the public remains ca'm. Maybe it will come to the conclusion that it'd prefer a lynching—people are funny.” He seemed to detach himself from the possible current of events.
“And, waking and sleeping, I have that before me!” cried the judge bitterly.
“You had ought to have thought of that sooner, when you was unloading that money. Why, it ain't even good counterfeit! I wonder a man of your years wa'n't slicker.”
“Have you taken steps to find the boy, or Solomon Mahaffy?” inquired the judge.
“For what?”
“How is my innocence going to be established—how am I going to clear myself if my witnesses are hounded out of the county?”
“I love to hear you talk, sir. I told 'em at the raising to-day that I considered you one of the most eloquent minds I had ever listened to—but naturally, sir, you are too smart to be honest. You say you ain't been convicted yet; but you're going to be! There's quite a scramble for places on the jury already. There was pistols drawed up at the tavern by some of our best people, sir, who got het up disputin' who was eligible to serve.” The judge groaned. “You should be thankful them pistols wasn't drawed on you, sir,” said the sheriff amiably. “You've got a heap to be grateful about; for we've had one lynching, and we've rid one or two parties on a rail after giving 'em a coat of tar and feathers.”
The judge shuddered. The sheriff continued placidly:
“I'll take it you'll get all that's coming to you, sir, say about twenty years—that had ought to let you out easy. Sort of round out your earthly career, and leave something due you t'other side of Jordan.”
“I suppose there is no use in my pointing out to you that I did not know the money was counterfeit, and that I was quite innocent of any intention to defraud Mrs. Walker?” said the judge, with a weary, exasperated air.
“It don't make no difference where you got the money; you know that, for you set up to be some sort of a lawyer.”
Presently the sheriff went his way into the dusk of the evening, and night came swiftly to fellowship the judge's fears. A single moonbeam found its way into the place, making a thin rift in the darkness. The judge sat down on the three-legged stool, which, with a shake-down bed, furnished the jail. His loneliness was a great wave of misery that engulfed him.
“Well, just so my life ain't cut short!” he whispered.
He had known a varied career, and what he was pleased to call his unparalleled misfortunes had reduced him to all kinds of desperate shifts to live, but never before had the law laid its hands on him. True, there had been times and seasons when he had been grateful for the gloom of the dark ways he trod, for echoes had taken the place of the living voice that had once spoken to his soul; but he could still rest his hand upon his heart and say that the law had always nodded to him to pass on.
Where was Solomon Mahaffy, and where Hannibal? He felt that Mahaffy could fend for himself, but he experienced a moment of genuine concern when he thought of the child. In spite of himself, his thoughts returned to him again and again. But surely some one would shelter and care for him!
“Yes—and work him like a horse, and probably abuse him into the bargain—”
Then there was a scarcely audible rustle on the margin of the woods, a dry branch snapped loudly. A little pause succeeded in which the judge's heart stood still. Next a stealthy step sounded in the clearing. The judge had an agonized vision of regulators and lynchers. The beat of his pulse quickened. He knew something of the boisterous horseplay of the frontier. The sheriff had spoken of tar and feathers—very quietly he stood erect and picked up the stool.
“Heaven helping me, I'll brain a citizen or two before it comes to that!” he told himself.
The cautious steps continued to approach. Some one paused below the closely shuttered window, and a hand struck the boards sharply. A whisper stole into the jail.
“Are you awake, Price?” It was Mahaffy who spoke.
“God bless you, Solomon Mahaffy!” cried the judge unsteadily.
“I've got the boy—he's with me,” said Mahaffy.
“God bless you both!” repeated the judge brokenly. “Take care of him, Solomon. I feel better now, knowing he's in good hands.”
“Please, Judge—” it was Hannibal
“Yes, dear lad?”
“I'm mighty sorry that ten dollars I loaned you was bad—but you don't need ever to pay it back!”
Mahaffy gave way to mirth.
“Never mind!” said the judge indulgently. “It performed all the essential functions of a perfectly legal currency. Just suppose we had discovered it was counterfeit before I took it to the tavern—that would have been a hardship!”
“It were Captain Murrell gave it to me,” explained Hannibal.
“I consecrate myself to his destruction! Judge Slocum Price can not be humiliated with impunity!”
“I should think you would save your wind, Price, until you'd waddled out of danger!” Mahaffy spoke, gruffly.
“How are you going to get me out of this, Solomon—for I suppose you are here to break jail for me,” said the judge.
Mahaffy inspected the building. He found that the door was secured by two ponderous hasps to which were fitted heavy padlocks, but the solid wooden shutter which closed the square hole in the gable that served as a window was fastened by a hasp and peg. He withdrew the peg, opened the shutter, and the judge's face, wreathed in smiles, appeared at the aperture.
“The blessed sky and air!” he murmured, breathing deep. “A week of this would have broken my spirit!”
“If you can, Price, you'd better come feet first,” suggested Mahaffy.
“Not sufficiently acrobatic, Solomon—it's heads or I lose!” said the judge.
He thrust his shoulders into the opening and wriggled outward. Suddenly his forward movement was arrested.
“I was afraid of that!” he said, with a rather piteous smile. “It's my stomach, Solomon!” Mahaffy seized him by the shoulders with lean muscular hands. “Pull!” cried the judge hoarsely. But Mahaffy's vigorous efforts failed to move him.
“I guess you're stuck, Price!”
“Get your wind, Solomon,” urged the judge, “and then, if Hannibal will reach up and work about my middle with his knuckles while you pull, I may get through.” But even this expedient failed.
“Do you reckon you can get me back? I should not care to spend the night so!” said the judge. He was purple and panting.
“Let's try you edgewise!” And Mahaffy pushed the judge into the jail again.
“No,” said the judge, after another period of resolute effort on his part and on the part of Mahaffy. “Providence has been kind to me in the past, but it's clear she didn't have me in mind when they cut this hole.”
“Well, Price, I guess all we can do is to go back to town and see if I can get into my cabin—I've got an old saw there. If I can find it, I can come again to-morrow night and cut away one of the logs, or the cleats of the door.”
“In Heaven's name, do that to-night, Solomon!” implored the judge. “Why procrastinate?”
“Price, there's a pack of dogs in this neighborhood, and we must have a full night to move in, or they'll pull us down before we've gone ten miles!”
The judge groaned.
“You're right, Solomon; I'd forgotten the dogs,” and he groaned again.
Mahaffy closed and fastened the shutter, then he and Hannibal stole across the clearing and entered the woods. The judge flung off his clothes and went to bed, determined to sleep away as many hours as possible. He was only aroused by the arrival of his breakfast, which the sheriff brought about eight o'clock.
“Well, if I was in your boots I couldn't sleep like you!” remarked that official admiringly. “But I reckon, sir, this ain't the first time the penitentiary has stared you in the face.”
“Then you reckon wrong,” said the judge sententiously, as he hauled on his trousers.
“No?—you needn't hurry none. I'll get them dishes when I fetch your dinner,” he added, as he took his leave.
A little later the blacksmith appeared and fitted three iron bars to the window.
“I reckon that'll hold you, old feller!” he observed pleasantly.
He was disposed to linger, since he was interested in the mechanical means employed in the making of counterfeit money and thirsted for knowledge at first hand. Also, he had in his possession a one-dollar bill which had come to him in the way of trade and which local experts had declared to be a spurious production. He passed it in between the bars and demanded the judge's opinion of it as though he were the first authority in the land. But he went no wiser than he came.
It was nearing the noon hour when the judge's solitude was again invaded. He first heard the distant murmur of voices on the road and passed an uneasy and restless ten minutes, with his eye to a crack in the door. He was soothed and reassured, however, when at last he caught sight of the sheriff.
“Well, judge, I got company for you,” cried the sheriff cheerfully, as he threw open the door. “A hoss-thief!”
He pushed into the building a man, hatless and coatless, with a pair of pale villainous eyes and a tobacco-stained chin. The judge viewed the new-comer with disfavor. As for the horse-thief, he gave his companion in misery a coldly critical stare, seated himself on the stool, and with quite a fierce air devoted all his energy to mastication. He neither altered his position nor changed his expression until he and the judge were alone, then, catching the judge's eye, he made what seemed a casual movement with his hand, the three fingers raised; but to the judge this clearly was without significance, and the horse-thief manifested no further interest where he was concerned. He did not even condescend to answer the one or two civil remarks the judge addressed to him.
As the long afternoon wore itself away, the judge lived through the many stages of doubt and uncertainty, for suppose anything had happened to Mahaffy! When the sheriff came with his supper he asked him if he had seen or heard of his friend.
“Judge, I reckon he's lopin' on yet. I never seen a man of his years run as well as he done—it was inspirin' how he got over the ground!” answered the sheriff. Then he attempted conversation with the horse-thief, but was savagely cursed for his pains. “Well, I don't envy you your company none, sir,” he remarked as he took leave of the judge.
Standing before the window, the judge watched the last vestige of light fade from the sky and the stars appear. Would Mahaffy come? The suspense was intolerable. It was possibly eight o'clock. He could not reasonably expect Mahaffy until nine or half past; to come earlier would be too great a risk. Suddenly out of the silence sounded a long-drawn whistle. Three times it was repeated. The horse-thief leaped to his feet.
“Neighbor, that means me!” he cried.
The moon was rising now, and by its light the judge saw a number of horsemen appear on the edge of the woods. They entered the clearing, picking their way among the stumps without haste or confusion. When quite close, five of the band dismounted; the rest continued on about the jail or cantered off toward the road. By this time the judge's teeth were chattering and he was dripping cold sweat at every pore. He prayed earnestly that they might hang the horsethief and spare him. The dismounted men took up a stick of timber that had been cut for the jail and not used.
“Look out inside, there!” cried a voice, and the log was dashed against the door; once—twice—it rose and fell on the clapboards, and under those mighty thuds grew up a wide gap through which the moonlight streamed splendidly. The horse-thief stepped between the dangling cleats and vanished. The judge, armed with the stool, stood at bay.
“What next?” a voice asked.
“Get dry brush—these are green logs—we'll burn this jail!”
“Hold on!” the judge recognized the horse-thief as the speaker. “There's an old party in there! No need to singe him!”
“Friend?”
“No, I tried him.”
The judge tossed away the stool. He understood now that these men were neither lynchers nor regulators. With a confident, not to say jaunty step, he emerged from the jail.
“Your servant, gentlemen!” he said, lifting his hat.
“Git!” said one of the men briefly, and the judge moved nimbly away toward the woods. He had gained its shelter when the jail began to glow redly.
Now to find Solomon and the boy, and then to put the miles between himself and Pleasantville with all diligence. As he thought this, almost at his elbow Mahaffy and Hannibal rose from behind a fallen log. The Yankee motioned for silence and pointed west.
“Yes,” breathed the judge. He noted that Mahaffy had a heavy pack, and the boy his long rifle. For a mile or two they moved forward without speech, the boy in the lead; while at his heels strode Mahaffy, with the judge bringing up the rear.
“How do you feel, Price?” asked Mahaffy at length, over his shoulder.
“Like one come into a fortune! Those horse-thieves gave me a fine scare, but did me a good turn.”
Hannibal kept to the woods by a kind of instinct, and the two men yielded themselves to his guidance; but there was no speech between them. Mahaffy trod in the boy's steps, and the judge, puffing like an overworked engine, came close upon his heels. In this way they continued to advance for an hour or more, then the boy paused.
“Go on!” commanded Mahaffy.
“Do you 'low the judge can stand it?” asked Hannibal.
“Bless you, lad!” panted the judge feelingly.
“He's got to stand it—either that, or what do you suppose will happen to us if they start their dogs?” said Mahaffy.
“Solomon's right—you are sure we are not going in a circle, Hannibal?”
“Yes, I'm sure,” said Hannibal. “Do you see that star? My Uncle Bob learned me how I was to watch that star when I wanted to keep going straight.”
There was another long interval of silence. Bit by bit the sky became overcast. Vague, fleecy rifts of clouds appeared in the heavens. A wind sprang up, murmuring about them, there came a distant roll of thunder, while along the horizon the lightning rushed in broken, jagged lines of fire. In the east there was a pale flush that showed the black, hurrying clouds the winds had summoned out of space.
The booming thunder, first only the sullen menace of the approaching storm, rolled nearer and nearer, and the fierce light came in blinding sheets of flame. A ceaseless, pauseless murmur sprang up out of the distance, and the trees rocked with a mighty crashing of branches, while here and there a big drop of rain fell. Then the murmur swelled into a roar as the low clouds disgorged themselves. Drenched to the skin on the instant, the two men and the boy stumbled forward through the gray wake of the storm.
“What's come of our trail now?” shouted the judge, but the sound of his voice was lost in the rush of the hurrying winds and the roar of the airy cascades that fell about them.
An hour passed. There was light under the trees, faint, impalpable without visible cause, but they caught the first sparkle of the rain drops on leaf and branch; they saw the silvery rivulets coursing down the mossy trunks of old trees; last of all through a narrow rift in the clouds, the sun showed them its golden rim, and day broke in the steaming woods. With the sun, with a final rush of the hurrying wind, a final torrent, the storm spent itself, and there was only the drip from bough and leaf, or pearly opalescent points of moisture on the drenched black trunks of maple and oak; a sapphire sky, high arched, remote overhead; and the June day all about.
“What's come of they trail now?” cried the judge again. “He'll be a good dog that follows it through, these woods!”
They had paused on a thickly wooded hillside.
“We've come eight or ten miles if we have come a rod, Price,” said Mahaffy, “and I am in favor of lying by for the day. When it comes dark we can go on again.”
The judge readily acquiesced in this, and they presently found a dense thicket which they cautiously entered. Reaching the center of the tangled growth, they beat down the briers and bushes, or cut them away with their knives, until they had a little cleared space where they could build a fire. Then from the pack which Mahaffy carried, the rudiments of a simple but filling meal were produced.
“Your parents took no chances when they named you Solomon!” said the judge approvingly.