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