CHAPTER X.
Warren looked about him in the light of the flaming torches. Men poured down to the water’s edge as fast as they could come. The crowds which surged through the streets day and night were rushing toward the wagon where lay the prisoner, their faces distorted like demons with evil passions.
Bill Thomson mounted the wagon-seat and with an oratorical flourish recounted the prisoner’s sins against the “principles of the institootion.”
“Gentlemen, take notice!” said Gid Holmes as Bill finished. “This yere man is a abolitionist an’ a nigger thief, two crimes we never overlooks, bein’ dangerous to our peace and principles. What’s your will, gentlemen? Speak out.”
“Give him a thrashing first!” “Hang him!” “Burn him!”
And the ruffians dragged the wounded man from the wagon and threw themselves upon him—kicking him in the body—in the face and head—spitting upon him and maltreating him in every way. He defended himself well for a while; his bright head would rise from their buffeting.
“To the cross-roads!” came the hoarse cry from a thousand throats.
Tramp, tramp, on they rushed like a dark river, with cries whose horror was indescribable. It was not the voices of human beings, but more like the cries of wild animals, the screaming of enraged hyenas, the snarling of tigers, the angry, inarticulate cries of thousands of wild beasts in infuriated pursuit of their prey, yet with a something in it more sinister and blood curdling, for they were men, and added a human ferocity.
On they rushed from north, south, east and west, eyes aflame, faces distorted, the brute latent in every human being coming out from his lair to blot out the man, the awful cries, waning, waxing.
Maxwell was in the midst, half-running, half-dragged by a rope knotted about his neck. He fell; the thirsty executioners lifted him up, loosened the rope and gave him time to breathe.
The tall young figure looked at the crowd with scorn. The British idea of fair play was in his mind.
“Thousands against one,” he seemed to say, “Cowards!”
The crowd moved on a little more slowly, and Warren was able to keep his feet without a tremor.
Some ran on before, and began gathering wood, for it was determined to burn the prisoner as a more fearful example of the death that awaited the men who dared interfere with the “institution.” Warren was dragged to the foot of the cross-roads sign and securely bound; the wood was piled about him. The circle was not built as high as his knees, for a slow fire steadily increased, would prolong the enjoyment. Thomson himself carried the brand to light the pile. His eyes met Warren’s as he knelt with the blazing pine. Not a word passed between them. A horrible and engrossing interest kept every eye on the glowing light. Presently the barrier of flame began to rise. A thousand voiced cry of brutal triumph arose—not to the skies, so vile a thing could never find the heavenly blue; it must have fallen to the regions of the lost.
They who speak or think lightly of a mob have never heard its voice nor seen its horrible work.
From the town came the ringing of bells set in motion when the party landed, still startling the night with their brazen clamor. The wildest excitement prevailed—armed riders dashed recklessly up and down in front of the place of execution, yelling, cursing, threatening.
The most trivial incidents accompany the progress of death. Warren noticed the faint light of the morning chasing away the stars. His keen sight lost not one change in the landscape. Children were in the crowd worming their way among the promiscuous legs and arms in the endeavor to gain a peep at the proceedings; one wee tot had fallen over backwards felled by the unexpected movement of the particular legs that obstructed his view. Warren was conscious of a deep sense of pity for the infants whom ignorance tortured from childhood’s simple holiness as cruelly as the mob was about to torture him. There came to him then a realizing sense of all the Immortal Son must have suffered on His way to Golgotha to die a shameful death through the ignorance and cruelty of a heartless world. If the story of the crucifixion had at times presented difficulties to an inquiring, analytical mind, this experience cleared away the shadows and the application of the story of the Redeemer came to him as a live coal from the altar of Infinite Truth.
The crew of the ferry-boat was hurrying forward with the wood stored aboard for the fires under the boilers; sounds of chopping came to his ears above the yells and shouts of the mob, and reverberated along the edges of the sky. Men were chopping fuel, others ran with arm-loads of it to build around the stake which had the festive air of a May-pole. Another group thought that the spectacle needed illumination at its beginning and were heaping fuel on a camp-fire, and its crackle could be heard almost as far as its light reached.
Men swaggered about with vast bluster and deep curses, howling for the sacrifice, quenching their thirst and fanning their fury anew at a temporary bar in the wagon where an enterprising individual was dispensing drinks to the crowd at a nominal price.
The sky overhead began to assume a roseate tinge. Swarming figures became more and more distinct. The fragrant wind encroaching from the woods, bringing its sweet odors, swept the smoke sidewise like an inverted curtain.
All was ready. There came a deafening cheer when Thomson moved pompously forward and with a theatrical gesture applied the torch; then followed silence deep and breathless as they waited to gloat over the victim’s first awful shriek of agony.
The flames rose. Warren ground his teeth, determined to die and make no moan to please and gratify the crowd. The sweat of physical anguish and faintness moved in drops on his forehead. His face was distinctly visible in the fierce glare. His arms were bound down against his sides, the wounded one causing him frightful torture. His shirt was open at the throat, showing the ivory firmness of his chest and the beating pulse in the white brawn. As the flames gathered headway the sky grew brighter and the shadows melted away; the crowing of cocks came faintly, above the horrid din, borne on the young morning air.
Suddenly off to the right came the sound of galloping hoofs. So imperative was the clatter that the attention of the crowd was forced for a moment from the victim at the stake.
On, on swept the riders in mad haste to the scene of torture, now distinctly visible through the cloud of dust that had at first partially concealed them from view; and now they rose in their stirrups shouting and waving their hats as if in warning. The fiends about the funeral pile made way for the cavalcade which was headed by Colonel Titus. All the party wore the uniform of State constables. “Halt!” cried the Colonel as he sprang from his horse at the edge of the crowd and cleared the open space immediately in front of the sign-post at one bound, followed by his companions. The crowd fell back respectfully. He and his men kicked the blazing wood from the stake, and scattered it with hands and feet as far as they could throw it. His own clothing smoked, and his face flamed with the exertion. The colonel cut Warren’s bonds, while his men continued to stamp out the fire. The crowd watched them in sullen silence.
“Fools!” he shouted, when at length the fire’s headway was subdued, “what are you doing?”
“Burning a nigger-thief,” shouted Gideon Holmes in reply.
“None of your monkeyin’, Bill Thomson; speak up. You had charge of this affair,” said Titus, not deigning to notice Holmes. Bill answered with a vile oath.
The crowd stood about in curious clusters. As the fire died down, the dawn became more pronounced. The brutal carnival seemed about to die out with the darkness as quickly as it had arisen.
“And you have been allowing your men to do that which will put us in the power of every Northern mudsill of an abolitionist, and eventually turn the tide which is now in our favor, against us!” The Colonel wheeled about and faced Thomson. “Was this the understanding when you started on the expedition?”
Bill still stood sullen-faced and silent before his accuser.
“Have we not jails strong enough to hold prisoners?” Titus asked, significantly.
“Dead men tell no tales,” declared Thomson, with a long look into his questioner’s eyes.
“True,” returned the Colonel with an answering glance. “But let all things be done in decency and order and according to the process of law. This man ain’t no army. There warn’t no need of your raisin’ and chasin’ and burnin’ him like a parcel of idiots.”
“’Pears to me you’re d——d finicky ’bout law an’ all that jes’ this particular time,” sneered Bill, with an evil leer on his face.
The Colonel eyed him keenly while a look of disgust spread slowly over his speaking face.
“Thomson, I gave you credit for having more sense. This man is a British subject. How are we to impress the world with our fair and impartial dealing with all mankind, and the slavery question in particular, if you and a lot more hot-headed galoots go to work and call us liars by breaking the slate?”
There were murmurs of approval from the crowd.
“Fac’ is thar’s nothin’ fer us to do but to light out, ain’t that the idee, Colonel?” asked Jim Murphy.
“That’s the idea, Murphy; burn the wind the whole caboodle of you!” The crowd began to disperse slowly.
“All very good,” broke in Thomson with a swagger. “I’ll take mine without the law. I’d ruther stay right here and carry out the programme, it’d be more satisfactory to the boys in the long run. Law is a delusion, as the poet says, an’ a snare. We git plenty o’ law an’ no jestice. S’pose the law lets the prisoner go free? You’ll be a real pop’lar candidate fer Missouri’s next gov’ner.”
“No fear of that in this State,” replied the Colonel with an ugly, brutal look that caused a shudder to creep over Warren who was surrounded by the constables. So full of malice were the tone and look that all signs of the polished elderly gentleman and doting father were lost, and one felt that this man could perpetrate any crime, however foul. In spite of the quiet tones the Colonel’s blood was at boiling point because of Thomson’s stubbornness. Titus turned to the constables: “Gentlemen, secure the prisoner. Thomson, fall in there and lend a hand; be quick about it. We’ve had too much of your fool talk a’ready. When I give my men an order, I ’low for them to obey me right up to the chalk mark.”
Bill gave him a long look and without a word mounted his horse, and rode away—not with the troop.
The constables instantly obeyed the Colonel’s order, and in a second Warren was lifted to the floor of the wagon and driven rapidly toward the jail.