LIKE A WOLF ON THE FOLD
Barbara, at her uncle's house, had not been able to go to bed. Tom's fate, she knew, would be decided the next day, and whatever of hope there might be for him was hidden in the mind of his lawyer. Mrs. Grayson had involuntarily fallen into a slumber, and the anxious Barbara sat by her in the darkness, wishing for the coming of the day, whose coming was nevertheless dreadful to her. The sound of a wagon rattling in another street startled her; she went to the window and strained her eyes against the darkness outside of the glass. Though she could not suspect that in the wagon was Bob McCord hurrying to the rescue of Tom, she was yet full of vague and indistinct forebodings. She wished she might have passed the night in the jail. A little after midnight she thought she heard a sound as of horses' feet: again she went to the window, but she could not see or hear anything. Then again she heard it: there could be no mistake now; she could make out plainly the confused thudding of many hoofs on the unpaved road. Presently, from sound rather than from sight, she knew that a considerable troop of horsemen were passing in front of her uncle's house. She left the room quietly, and spoke to her uncle as she passed his door; but without waiting for him she went out into the street and ran a little way after the horsemen, stopping, hearkening, turning this way and that in her indecision, and at length, after groping among the trees and stumps in the public square, reached the jail.
Jake Hogan had sent forward two men to watch the prison, while he with his main force surrounded Plunkett's house. The sheriff had obediently kept his place where Bob had laid him, in the middle of the floor, until he got into a chill. Then, as he heard no sound outside of the house, his courage revived, and he crept back into bed.
Jake had come prepared to play the bully, according to agreement, in order to save Plunkett's reputation for courage and fidelity, but he was disconcerted at finding the door of the house wide open; he had not expected that things would be made so easy. After stumbling over the fallen door-facing, he boldly mounted the stairs with as much noise as possible. Entering Plunkett's bedroom, he cried out in what he conceived to be his most impressive tones:
"Gin up the keys of that ar jail, ur your time has come."
"What air you up to now?" cried the sheriff, angry at this second visit. "You knocked me down and got the keys nigh on to an hour ago. Now what in thunderation does this hullabaloo mean, I want to know."
"Wha' choo talkin'?" said Jake. "We hain't on'y jest got yer."
"Only just got here?" said the sheriff, rising up in bed. "Only just come? Then there's another crowd that must 'a' done the business ahead of you. There was more 'n forty men surrounded this house awhile ago, and beat down my door, and come upstairs here in this room, and knocked me down and choked me black and blue and went off with the keys. I guess they've hung Tom and gone before this."
"Looky h-yer now, we don't want no more uv your tricks. We're the on'y party out to-night, sartin shore, un we're boun' to have them air keys ur die," said Jake, tragically. "You might's well gin 'em up fust as last, Hank Plunkett, un save yourself trouble."
"Well, if you want 'em, you'll have to look 'em up," said the sheriff. "I haven't got 'em, and I'll be hanged if I know who has. I was knocked down and nearly killed by a whole lot of men. Kill me, if you've got a mind to, but you won't find the keys in this house. So there now." And he lay back on his pillow.
"Come on, boys; we'll s'arch the jail. Un ef we've been fooled weth, Hank Plunkett'll have to pay fer it."
With that the Broad Run boys departed and the sheriff got up and dressed himself. There was a mystery about two lynching parties in one night; and there might be something in it that would affect his bond or his political prospects if it were not looked into at once. He resolved to alarm the town.
At the jail door Hogan encountered Barbara piteously begging the men to spare her brother's life.
"Looky h-yer," he said, in a graveyard voice, "this ain't no kind uv a place fer women folks. You go 'way."
"No, I won't go away. I'm Tom's sister and I won't leave him. You mustn't shoot him. He didn't kill George Lockwood."
"You mus' go 'way, ur you'll git shot yer own self," said Jake.
"Well, shoot me—d' you think I care? I'd rather die with Tom. I know your voice, Jake Hogan; and if you kill Tom you'll be a murderer, for he isn't."
"Take her away, boys," said Jake, a little shaken by this unexpected appeal. But nobody offered to remove Barbara. All of these rude fellows were touched at sight of her tears. It had not occurred to them to take into account the sister or the mother when they thoughtlessly resolved to hang Tom. But the path of the reformer is always beset by such thorns.
"Down weth that ar door!" cried Jake, not to be baffled in his resolution, and convinced by Barbara's solicitude that Tom was certainly within. There was reason for haste too, for the villagers were already stirring, and there might be opposition to his summary proceedings. But pompous commands have not much effect on heavy doors, and Jake found that this one would not down so easily as he hoped. Jake began pounding on it with the poll of an ax borrowed from a neighboring wood-pile, and meanwhile dispatched two men to break open the blacksmith shop and fetch a sledge-hammer. But S'manthy's boy, on his own motion, went around to the back of the jail with the purpose of trying the window. Finding it as Bob had left it, with the grating torn out, he entered the jail and penetrated to the dungeon, coming back presently to tell Jake that he had found the window out, the dungeon door open, and Tom "clean gone."
"Thunder!" said Jake, dropping his ax. "Who could they be? The shuruff says they wuz more 'n forty on 'em; so they couldn't be rescuers. They hain't ten men in the wide worl' 'at thinks Tom's innercent. Like 's not it's a lot uv fellers f'um the south-east of the k-younty, down towards Hardscrabble, whar Lockwood had some kin. They've hung him summers. Let's ride 'roun' un see ef we kin fin' any traces. Un ef Hank Plunkett has played a trick, we'll git squar' some day, ur my name hain't Hogan."
The men mounted and rode off. Barbara, who stood by in agony while Jake beat upon the door, and who had heard the report that Tom was gone, could not resist the despairing conclusion that he must have suffered death. In her broken-hearted perplexity she could think of nothing better than to hurry to the tavern where Hiram Mason was a boarder. Half the people of the village were by this time in the streets, running here and there and saying the most contradictory things. Mason had been awakened with the rest, and by the time Barbara reached the tavern door, she encountered him coming out.
"W'y, Barbara! for goodness' sake, what brought you out? What has happened?" he said.
"O Mr. Mason! I'm afraid Tom's dead. I ran after Jake Hogan and his men when I heard them pass, and begged Jake to let Tom off. They tried to drive me away, but I staid; and when they got into jail, Tom wasn't there. Jake said that the sheriff said he had been taken away and lynched by more than forty men. Oh, if they have killed the poor boy!"
"Maybe it isn't so bad," said Hiram, as he took her left hand in his right and led her, as he might have led a weeping child, along the dark street toward her uncle's house. "Don't cry any more, Barbara!"
"I shouldn't wonder," he said, after a while, "if Bob McCord knows something of this."
"But we left him at home to-night," said Barbara; and then she began to weep again, and to say over and over in an undertone, "O my poor Tom!"
Mason could not say any more. He only grasped her hand the more firmly in his and walked on. Presently a wagon came across the walk just in front of them, issuing from an alley.
"That's Butts's wagon, and that's his bay colt, I do believe," said Barbara, looking sharply at the dark silhouette of the horse. "I know the way that horse carries his head. I wonder if Butts has been mean enough to have anything to do with this wicked business."
What Barbara saw was Zeke Tucker hastening to replace the horse in the stable, while Bob remained in town to keep a furtive watch over the court-house till morning. Mason thought he saw some one moving in the alley, and a detective impulse seized him.
"Stay here a moment, Barbara," he said, and letting go of her hand he ran into the alley and came plump upon the burly form of Bob McCord.
"It's all right, Mr. Mason," chuckled Bob. "Tom's safe 'n' soun' where they'll never find him. By thunder!" And Bob looked ready to explode with laughter; the whole thing was to him one of the best of jokes.
"Come and tell Barbara," said Mason.
Bob came out of the alley to where Barbara was standing near the white-spotted trunk of a young sycamore, and recounted briefly how he had fooled Butts, and how he had got the keys from Plunkett. His resonant laughter grated on Barbara's feelings, but she was too grateful to him to resent the rudeness of his nature.
"Where is Tom?" Barbara asked.
"Oh! I'm a-playin' Abe Lincoln," said Bob in a whisper. "The fewer that knows, the better it'll be. Tom says he won't light out, unless Abra'm says to. Speak'n' of Abe Lincoln," he said, "I don't want to be seed weth him to-night. You go back, Mr. Mason, un tell Abe 't Tom's safe. Ef he thinks Tom's chances is better to stan' trial, w'y, he'll find 'im in the court-house to-morry when the court wants 'im, shore as shootin'. He's on'y out on bail to-night," said Bob, unwilling to lose his joke. "But ef Abe thinks Tom hain't got no chance afore a jury, let 'im jest wink one eye, kind-uh, un 'fore daybreak I'll have the boy tucked into a bear's hole 't I know of, un he kin lay there safe fer a week un then put out for Wisconsin, ur Missouri, ur the Ioway country. You go 'n' let Abe know, un I'll see Barb'ry safe home—she won't gimme the mitten to-night, I 'low." And Bob chuckled heartily; life was all so droll to this man, blessed with a perfect digestion and not worried by any considerable sense of responsibility.
Mason went up to Lincoln's room and awakened him to tell him the story of the night. The lawyer's face relaxed, and at length he broke into a merry but restrained laughter. He saw almost as much fun in it as Bob McCord had, and Mason felt a little out of patience that he should be so much amused over such a life-and-death affair.
"Tom doesn't want to be an outlaw," said Lincoln very gravely, when the question of Tom's going or staying was put to him. "I don't believe he could escape; and if he did, life would hardly be worth the having. There is only just one chance of proving his innocence, but I think he'd better stay and take that. Maybe we'll fail; if we do, it may yet be time enough to fall back on Bob and his bear's hole. By the way, where has Bob stowed Tom for the night?"
"Bob won't tell," said Mason. "He says he's playing Abe Lincoln; and the fewer that know, the better."
Lincoln laughed again, and nodded his head approvingly. "So he brings Tom to court in good time," he said.
Mason went out and encountered Bob in the street, and gave him Lincoln's decision. Then Hiram went and told Barbara about it, and sat with her and her mother until morning. A while before daybreak, finding the town free from any person disposed to molest Tom, Bob came to Barbara and had her make a cup of coffee and give him a sandwich or two. These he took out of the back gate of the Grayson garden and left them with Tom in the court-house.
The next morning at half-past 6 o'clock the lawyers of the circuit took their seats at the breakfast-table in the meagerly furnished, fly-specked dining-room of the tavern, the windows of which were decorated with limp chintz curtains, and the space of which was entirely filled with the odors of coffee and fried ham, mingled with smells emitted by the rough-coat plastering and the poplar of the woodwork: this compound odor of the building was a genius of the place. The old judge, who sat at the end of the table opposite to that occupied by the landlady, spread his red silk handkerchief across his lap preparatory to beginning his meal, and looked up from under his overhanging brows at Lincoln, who was just taking his seat.
"What's this, Lincoln? I hear your client was carried off last night by a mob of forty or fifty men and probably hanged. And you don't even get up early to see about it."
"My client will be in court this morning, Judge," said the lawyer, looking up from his plate.
"What!"
"I am informed that he is in a safe place, and he will be ready for trial this morning."
"Where is he?" asked the judge, looking penetratingly at Lincoln.
