In the clouds

by Charles Egbert Craddock

X.

The little brick court-house in Shaftesville had stood for half a century in the centre of the village square, as impassive as an oracle to the decrees which issued from it. Even time seemed able to make but scant impression upon it. True, the changes of the day might register on its windows, flaring with fictitious fires when the sun was in the west, or reflecting the moonlight with pallid glimmers, as if some white-faced spectre had peered out into the midnight through the dusty pane. Mosses clung to its walls; generations of swallows nested in its chimneys, soaring up from them now and then, bevies of black dots, as if the records below had spewed out a surplusage of punctuation marks and blots; decay had touched a window-sill here and there. But it was still called the “new court-house,” in contradistinction to the primitive log building that it had replaced; and despite some inward monitions of its age once in a while, its long experience of various phases of life, its knowledge of the coming and going of many men who would come and go no more, it was enabled to maintain an air of jaunty unconsciousness, as it was still the handsomest edifice in Shaftesville and of a somewhat imposing architectural pretension. It had beheld many a “State’s day” dawn like this, with fitful gusts of wind and rain, with a frenzied surging of the boughs of the hickory-trees about it as if some sylvan grief beset them, with a continual shifting of the mists that veiled the mountains and hung above the roofs of the straggling little town.

The few stores, all of which faced the square, were early full of customers clad in jeans, with heavy cowhide boots deeply bemired by the red clay mud of the streets, and with gruff faces that expressed surly disapproval of the frills and frippery of civilization as exhibited in Shaftesville. Canvas-covered wagons, laden with produce and drawn by oxen, stood before the doors, and among the piles of corn and bags of apples and chestnuts children’s wide-eyed, grave faces looked out cautiously from behind the flaps at the inexplicable “town ways.” In the intervals of the down-pour there was much stir in the streets. Men with long-skirted coats and broad hats and stern, grizzled faces rode about on gaunt mountain horses. Now and then one would be accompanied by an elderly woman in homespun dress, a shawl and sun-bonnet, wearing a settled look of sour disaffection, and chirruping a sharp warning rather than encouragement to her stumbling, antiquated gray mare. There were many horses hitched to the palings of the court-house fence, and numbers of men lounged about the yard, all crowding up the steps as the tuneless clangor of the bell smote the air. Around the door of the jail boys and rowdyish young men assembled, waiting with an indomitable patience, despite the quick, sharp showers, to see the prisoner led out.

The people of Shaftesville regarded the swarm of visitors as somewhat an encroachment upon their vested rights. “Leave anybody in the mountains?” was a frequent raillery.

“Ye town folks jes’ ’lowed ye’d hev all the fun ter yerselves o’ seein’ Mink Lorey tried, ye grudgin’ half-livers,” the mountaineers would retort; “but from what I kin see, I reckon ye air sorter mistook this time, sure.”

And indeed the court-room was crowded as it had seldom been in the fifty years that justice had been meted out here. In the space without the bar the benches groaned and creaked beneath the weight of those who had taken the precaution to secure seats in advance, and had occupied them in dreary waiting since early in the morning. The forethought of one coterie had come to naught, for the bench succumbed beneath twenty stalwart mountaineers; its feeble supports bent, and as the party collapsed in a wild mingling of legs and arms, waving in frantic efforts to recover equilibrium, Shaftesville was “mighty nigh tickled ter death,” for the first time that day. As the sprawling young fellows sheepishly gathered themselves together, a burst of jeering laughter filled the room, only gradually subdued by the sheriff’s “Silence in court!”

The attorney-general was already piling his books and papers on the table, consulting his notes and absorbed in his preparations. He was a man of fifty, perhaps, with a polished bald head that might have been of interest to a phrenologist (for it had sundry marked protuberances), blunt, strong features, a heavy lower jaw, an expression of insistent common sense, and a deep bass voice. He was sonorously clearing his throat just now, and was wiping from his thick, short, grizzled mustache drops of some fluid that gave a pervasive unequivocal odor to his breath. It had only rejoiced his stomach, however, and did not affect the keen acumen for which he was famous, and he was settling to his work with an evident intention of giving the defense all they would be able to wrestle with. The old miller, in his rags and patches, sat beside him as prosecutor. His face wore a strange meekness. Now and then he lifted his bleared eyes with an intent look, as if hearing some unworded counsels; then shook his head and bowed it, with its long white locks, upon his hands clasped on his stick. There were many glances directed toward him, half in commiseration, half in curiosity; but these sentiments were bated somewhat by familiarity, for there was hardly a man in Cherokee County who had not visited the ruins of the mill and heard much gossip about the old man’s uncharacteristic humility and submissive grief.

A stronger element of interest was added to the impending trial by the circumstance that it was a stranger on the bench. Comparatively few of the assemblage had been in attendance the preceding days, during the trial of the civil cases, and in the preliminary moments, throughout the opening of the court, the reading of the minutes, the calling of the roll, the miscellaneous motions, until the criminal docket was taken up and the case called, the judge sustained the fixed gaze of one half the county.

He did not embody the sleek, successful promise of his reputation. He had the look of a man who has fought hard for all that he has won, and, unsatisfied, is ready to fight again. It was a most unappeased, belligerent spirit expressed in his eyes. They were of a dark gray, and deeply set. He had straight black hair, cut short about his head. His face wore a repressed impatience; sharp lines were drawn about it, making him seem somewhat older than his age, which was thirty-five or six; his nose had a fine, thin nostril; his chin was round and heavy. He wore a long mustache; now and then he gnawed at the end of it. He sat stiffly erect before the desk, his elbow upon it, his chin resting in his hand. His blue flannel suit hung negligently on his tall, slender figure, and they were lean, long fingers that held his chin.

He was looking about with a restless eye. The great round stove in the room was red hot. Snow had been seen on the summits of the distant Smoky, and was not this sure indication that winter was at hand? The sheriff was a man of rigid rule and precedent, and the fire had been built accordingly.

The judge spoke suddenly. He had a singularly low, inexpressive voice, a falling inflection, and a deliberate, measured manner. “Mr. Sheriff,” he said, “hoist that window, will you?”

All the windows were occupied by men and boys, some of them standing that they might obtain a better view of the prisoner when he should be led in. From the sill of the window indicated they descended with clumsy hops and thumps upon the floor, as they made way for the sheriff to admit the air. There was a half-suppressed titter from those more fortunately placed, as the dispossessed and discomfited spectators crowded together against the wall. The judge glanced about with displeasure in his eyes.

“I’ll have you to understand,” he said in his unimpassioned drawl, “that a trial before a court of justice is not a circus or a show. And if there’s not more quiet in this court-room, I’ll send one half of this crowd to jail.”

There was quiet at once. The gaze fixed upon him was suddenly an unfriendly look. To be sure, he was not a visiting clergyman, but one expects a certain degree of urbanity from the stranger within one’s gates, however lofty his mission and imperious his authority. Their own judicial magnate, Judge Averill, was a very lenient man, fat, and bald, and jolly. The frequenters of the place could but be impressed with the contrast. If Judge Averill found the room or the weather too warm, he took off his coat, and tried his cases clothed in his right mind, and in little else. Everybody in the county was familiar with the back of his vest, which had a triangular wedge of cloth let into it, for the judge had become more expansive than when the vest was a fit. He was a sound lawyer and an excellent man, and his decisions suffered no disparagement from his shirt sleeves.

The pause of expectation was prolonged. The stove was cracking, as it abruptly cooled, as if with inarticulate protest against these summary proceedings. The autumnal breeze came in dank and chill at the window. The spectators moved restlessly in their places. There was a sharp contrast between the townspeople—especially the lawyers within the bar, in their dapper store clothes, and with that alert expression habitual with men who think for a living—and the stolid, ruminative mountain folks, with unshorn beards and unkempt heads, habited in jeans, and lounging about in slouching postures.

There was a sudden approach of feet in the hall,—the feet, to judge by their nimble irresponsibility, of scuttling small boys. A thrill of excitement ran through the crowd as a heavier tramp resounded. The sheriff in charge of the prisoner, who was accompanied by his counsel, came into the room so swiftly as almost to impair the effect of the entry, and Mink and his lawyer sat down within the bar.

Oddly enough, Mink’s keen, bright eyes were elate as he glanced about. He looked so light, so alert, so elastically ready to bound away, that those cautious souls, who like to be on the safe side, felt that it would conduce to the public weal if he were still ironed. He was visibly excited, too; his expression conveyed the idea of an inadequate recognition of everything that he saw, but he stood up and pleaded “Not guilty” in a steady, strong voice, and with his old offhand, debonair, manly manner. He held his hat in his hand,—a long time, poor fellow, since he had had need of it; his clothes still bore the rents of the struggle when he was captured; his fine hair curled down upon his brown jeans coat collar; and his face had an unwonted delicacy of effect, the refined result of the prosaic “jail-bleach.” He seemed most thoroughly alive. In contrast any other personality suggested torpor. His strong peculiarities had a certain obliterative effect upon others; he was the climax of interest in the room. The judge looked at him with marked attention.

Harshaw had flung himself back in his chair, that quaked in every fibre beneath him. He mopped his flushed face with his handkerchief, sighed with fatness and anxiety, and pulled down his vest and the stubs of his shirt sleeves about his thick wrists, for he wore no cuffs. He leaned forward from time to time, and whispered with eager perturbation to the prisoner, who seemed to listen with a sort of flout of indifference and confident protest. Mink’s conduct was so unexpected, so remarkable, that it attracted general attention. The members of the bar had taken note of it, and presently two or three commented in whispers on Harshaw’s preoccupation. For he, a stickler at trifles, a man that fought on principle every point of his case, had allowed something to slip his notice. The names of the jury were about to be drawn. The sheriff, seeking, according to the law, that exponent of guilelessness, “a child under ten years of age,” had encountered one in the hall, and came back into the room, beckoning with many an alluring demonstration some small person, invisible because of the density of the crowd. It once more showed a disposition to titter, for the sheriff, a bulky, ungainly man, was wreathing his hard features into sweetly insistent smiles, when there appeared, in the open space near the judge’s desk, a little maiden, following him, beginning to smile, too, under so many soft attentions. Her blowzy, uncovered hair was of a sunny hue; her red lips parted to show her snaggled little teeth; her eyes, so fresh, so blue, were fastened upon him with an expression of blandest favor; her plump little body was arrayed in a blue-checked cotton frock; and despite the season her feet were bare. It was perhaps this special mark of poverty that attracted the attention of one of the lawyers. He was a man of extraordinary memory, a politician, and well acquainted in the coves. He looked hard at the little girl. Then he whispered to a crony that she was the miller’s granddaughter. For it was “Sister Eudory.” They watched Harshaw with idle interest, expecting him to identify the small kinswoman of the drowned boy, and to derive from the fact some fine-spun theory of incompetency. He did not recognize her, however,—perhaps he had never before seen her; he only gave her a casual glance, and then turned his eyes upon the jury list in his hands.

The scrolls bearing the names of the proposed jurors were placed in a hat, and the sheriff, bowing his long back, extended it to “Sister Eudory.”

She held her pretty head askew, looked up, smiling with childish coquetry at the judge, put in her dimpled hand with a delicate tentative gesture, took out a scroll, and under the sheriff’s directions, handed it to the clerk with an elaborate air of bestowal. He looked at it, and read the name aloud.

Her charming infantile presence, as she stood by the judge’s desk among the grave, bearded men, drawing the jury with her dimpled hands, won upon the crowd. There were laughing glances interchanged, and no dissenting opinion as to the prettiness and “peartness” of “Sister Eudory.” She was evidently under the impression that she was performing some great public feat, as she again thrust in her hand, caught up another scroll, and smiled radiantly into the face of the judge, who was visibly embarrassed by the blandishments of the small coquette. He hardly knew how to return her gaze, and instead he glanced casually out of the window close by.

The defense frequently availed themselves of their right of peremptory challenge. This was a matter of preconcerted detail with the jury list before them. Whenever it was possible they challenged “for cause” until the venire was exhausted. Then jurors were summoned from the by-standers. It was not exactly the entertainment for which the crowd had been waiting, but they found a certain interest in seeing Mink, no longer indifferent, lean forward, and with acrimonious eagerness whisper into the counsel’s ear presumable defamations of the juror, who looked on helplessly and with an avidity of curiosity as to what was about to be publicly urged against him. Over and again the sheriff made incursions into the streets, summoning talesmen wherever he could lay his hands on suitable persons. Men of undoubted integrity and sobriety were scarce at the moment, for the good citizens of Shaftesville, averse to the duty, and hearing that he was abroad on this mission, disappeared as if the earth had swallowed them. Plunging into the stores, the baffled official would encounter only the grins of the few callow clerks—proprietor and customers having alike fled. Once he pursued the flying coat-tails and the soles of the nimble feet of one of the solid men of the town around a corner, never coming nearer. It was a time-honored custom to respond thus to one’s country’s call, and engendered no bitterness in the sheriff’s breast. Perhaps he considered this saltatory exercise one of the official duties to which he had been dedicated.

The difficulty of securing a jury was unexampled in the annals of the county. Many, otherwise eligible, confessed to a prejudice against Mink, and had formed and freely expressed an opinion as to his guilt. One old codger from some sequestered cove of the mountains, never before having visited Shaftesville, and desirous of adding to the strange tales of his travels the unique experience of serving on the jury, dashed his own hopes when questioned as usual, by replying glibly in the affirmative. He said, too, that the “outdacious rascality of the prisoner showed in his face, an’ ef they locked him up for life he’d be a warnin’ ter the other mischievious young minks, fur the kentry war a-roamin’ with ’em.” His look of blank amazement and discomfiture when told to “stand aside” elicited once more the ready titter of the crowd and the sheriff’s formula, “Silence in court!”

As such admissions were made, Mink sat, his head thrust forward, his bright, intent eyes flashing indignantly, a fluctuating flush on his pallid cheek, his whole lithe, motionless figure seeming so alert that it would scarcely have astonished the community if he had sprung upon the holder of these aggressive views of his guilt. His lawyer sneered, and now and then exchanged a glance of scornful comment with him,—for Harshaw had recovered his equanimity in the exercise of that most characteristic quality, his pugnacity, during his wrangles with the attorney for the State in challenging the jurymen.

The crude gray light of the autumn day waned. A dim shadow fell over the assemblage. Gusts of wind dashed the rain against the grimy panes, the drops trickling down in long, irregular lines; the yellow hickory leaves went whirling by, sometimes dropping upon the window-ledges, and away again on the restless blast. The mists pressed against the glass, then quivered and disappeared, and came once more. Occasionally a great hollow voice sounded from the empty upper chambers of the building and through the long halls; the doors left ajar slammed now and then, and the sashes rattled as the wind rose higher.

It was not more cheerful when the lamps were lighted, for the court did not adjourn at the usual hour. A strong smell of coal oil and of ill-trimmed wicks pervaded the air; a bated suffusion of yellow radiance emanated from them into the brown dimness of the great room. The illumined faces were dull with fatigue and glistening with perspiration, for the stove was once again red-hot,—an old colored man, with a tropical idea of comfort, appearing at close intervals with an armful of wood. Old Griff’s long white hair gleamed among the darker heads within the bar. He had fallen asleep, his forehead bowed on his hands, his hands clasped on his stick. Strange shadows seemed to be attending court. Grotesque distortions of humanity walked the walls, and lurked among the assemblage, and haunted the open door, and looked over the shoulder of the judge.

It began to be very apparent to the spectators, the bar, the prisoner, the attorney-general, and the sheriff, that Judge Gwinnan had the fixed purpose of sitting there without adjournment until the requisite competent dozen jurors should be secured. It was already late, long past the usual hour for supper, and although the lawyers and the crowd, who could withdraw and refresh themselves as they wished, might approve of this ascetic determination neither to eat nor to sleep until the jury was achieved, the sheriff, his deputy absent, felt it a hardship. He was a bulky fellow, accustomed to locomotion only on horseback. He had taken much exercise to-day on foot, a sort of official Diogenes,—searching for a mythical unattained man of an exigent mental and moral pattern,—with not even a tub as a haven to which he might have the poor privilege of retiring. When he next darted out with a sort of unwieldy agility into the hall, which was lighted by a swinging lamp, the wick turned too high and the chimney emitting flames tipped with smoke, he was not easily to be withstood. He seized upon a man leaning idly against the wall, his hands in his pockets, whom he had not seen before to-day. “Ye air the very feller I’m a-lookin’ fur!” he cried, magnifying the accident into a feat of intention.

Peter Rood drew back further against the wall, with a shocked expression on his swarthy face and in his glittering black eyes. “I can’t!” he cried. “Lemme go!”

“Why can’t ye?” demanded the sheriff.

“I ain’t well,” protested Rood, more calmly.

“Shucks!” the officer incredulously commented. “Ef all I hev hearn o’ that sort to-day war true, thar ain’t a hearty, whoppin’ big man in Cherokee County but what’s got every disease from the chicken pip ter the yaller fever. Come on, Pete, an’ quit foolin’.”

Under the strong coercion of the law administered by a sheriff who wanted his supper, Rood could but go.

Despite his rapacious interest in all that concerned the tragedy, he had hitherto held aloof from the court-house; he had withdrawn himself even from the streets, fearing to meet the sheriff. Seeing the great yellow lights in the windows, each flaring in the rainy night like some many-faceted topaz, he had fancied that the trial must be well under way, for no gossip had come to him in his hiding-place of the difficulty of securing a jury. He could no longer resist his curiosity. He strode at his leisurely gait up the steps, meaning merely to glance within, when the sheriff issued upon him.

As he came with the officer into the room, Mink scanned him angrily, leaned forward, and whispered sharply to the lawyer. Rood was trembling in every fibre; the fixed gaze of all the crowd seemed to pierce him; his great eyes turned with a fluctuating, meaningless stare from one official to the other.

He was a freeholder, not a householder. He had expressed no opinion as to the guilt of the prisoner. Had he formed none? He had not thought about it. He was challenged by the defense on the score of personal enmity toward the prisoner, the peremptory challenges being exhausted. As he was otherwise eligible he was put upon his voir dire.

Harshaw looked steadily at him for a moment, his red lips curling, sitting with his arms folded across his broad chest. Mink’s bright, keen face close behind him was expectant, already triumphant. His hand was on the back of his counsel’s chair.

Suddenly Harshaw, tossing his hair from his brow, leaned forward, with his folded arms on the table before him.

“Did you not, sir,” he said, smacking his confident red lips, and with an exasperatingly deliberate delivery,—“did you not on the twentieth day of August ascend a certain summit of the Great Smoky Mountains called Piomingo Bald, and there”—he derisively thrust out his red tongue and withdrew it swiftly—“shoot and kill a certain cow, believing it to belong to Mink Lo—to Reuben Lorey?”

The judge’s eyes were fixed upon Rood. He seemed strangely agitated, shocked; his face assumed a ghastly pallor.

The attorney-general protested that the juror was not obliged to answer a question which tended to fasten disgrace, nay crime, upon him; Harshaw the while still leaning on the table, laughing silently, and looking with the roseate dimples of corpulent triumph at their discomfiture.

“The juror need not answer,” said the judge.

“I’m mighty willin’ ter answer, jedge,” gasped Rood. “I never done no sech thing sence I war born.”

In the estimation of all the crowd it was natural that he should say this; to accept the privilege of silence would be admission.

“Let me put another question in altogether another field,” said Harshaw, smoothing his yellow beard. “If it please the court to permit us to cite the decision of an inferior court, perhaps, but altogether beyond the jurisdiction of this honorable court, I should like to refer to the dicta in the courts of Cupid. Were not you and the prisoner suitors for the hand of the same young lady?”

It tickled him, to use a phrase most descriptive of the enjoyment he experienced, to describe in this inflated manner the humble “courtin’” of the mountaineers. There was a broad smile on many of the faces within the bar, the townspeople relishing particularly a joke of this character on the mountain folks. The judge’s discerning gray eye was fixed upon him as his pink laugh expanded, his peculiarly red lips showing his strong white teeth.

“Yes, sir, we war,” Rood admitted. He was calm now; his agitation had excited no comment; it was to be expected in a man surprised, confounded, and dismayed by so serious a charge.

“You were! How interesting! Go where you may, the world’s the same! The charmer spreads her snare even up in the cove! And you and Reuben Lorey fell together in it, two willing victims. And as he got the best of it, as the lady preferred him, it would be natural that you should have some little grudge against him, hey?”

“I dunno how he got the best of it,” said Rood sharply. “I ain’t got no grudge agin him fur that. ’Twar jes’ yestiddy she sent me word by her mother ter kem back; she war jes’ foolin’ Mink.”

He was evidently glad to tell it; he did not care even for the giggle in the crowd.

The lawyer was abashed for a moment, and Mink, so long accustomed to be rated a breaker of hearts, a lady-killer, was grievously cut down. In all the episodes of that day which had so bristled with animosity this was the first moment that his spirit flagged, despite that he had never heretofore cared for Elvira,—did not care for her now.

Rood hardly was aware how the examination was tending; in the interests of self-defense he had overlooked its purpose. He stood staring with blank amaze when the judge’s voice ended the discussion.

“The juror is competent,” he said.

The two remaining talesmen being unchallenged, the jury was duly impaneled and sworn.

The court was adjourned. The sleepy crowd filed out into the streets, the lights in the court-house windows disappeared, and a dark and vacant interval ensued.