DIED FOR THE LAW
And thus was begun that historical lynching in the Tennessee Valley—a tragedy which well might have remained unwritten had it not fallen into the woof of this story.
A white man had been killed for a negro—that was enough.
It is true the man was attempting to commit murder in the face of the law of the land; and in attempting it had shot the representative of the law. It is true, also, that he had no grievance, being one of several hundred law-breakers bent on murder. This, too, made no difference; they neither thought nor cared;—for mobs, being headless, do not think; and being soulless, do not suffer.
They had failed only for lack of a leader.
But now they had a leader, and a mob with a leader is a dangerous thing.
That leader was Richard Travis.
It was after midnight when he rode up on the scene. Before he arrived, Jud Carpenter had aroused the mob to do its first fury, and still held them, now doubly vengeful and shouting to be led against the jail. But to storm a jail they needed a braver man than Jud Carpenter. And they found him in Richard Travis—especially Richard Travis in the terrible mood, the black despair which had come upon him that night.
Why did he come? He could not say. In him had surged two great forces that night—the force of evil and the force of good. Twice had the good overcome—now it was the evil's turn, and like one hypnotized, he was led on.
He sat his horse among them, pale and calm, but with a cruel instinct flashing in his eyes. At least, so Jud Carpenter interpreted the mood which lay upon him; but no one knew the secret workings of this man's heart, save God.
He had come to them haggard and blanched and with a nameless dread, his arm tied up where the dog's fang had been buried in his flesh, his heart bitter in the thought of the death that was his. Already he felt the deadly virus pulsing through his veins. A hundred times in the short hour that had passed he suffered death—death beginning with the gripping throat, the shortened breath, the foaming mouth, the spasm!
He jerked in the saddle—that spasmodic chill of the nerves,—and he grew white and terribly silent at the thought of it—the death that was his!
Was his! And then he thought: “No, there shall be another and quicker way to die. A braver way—like a Travis—with my boots on—my boots on—and not like a mad-dog tied to a stake.
“Besides—Alice—Alice!”
She had gone out of his life. Could such a thing be and he live to tell it? Alice—love—ambition—the future—life! Alice, hazel-eyed and glorious, with hair the smell of which filled his soul with perfume as from the stars. She who alone uplifted him—she another's, and that other Tom Travis!
Tom Travis—returned and idealized—with him, the joint heir of The Gaffs.
And that mad-dog—that damned mad-dog! And if perchance he was saved—if that virus was sucked out of his veins, it was she—Helen!
“This is the place to die,” he said grimly—“here with my boots on. To die like a Travis and unravel this thing called life. Unravel it to the end of the thread and know if it ends there, is snapped, is broken or—
“Or—my God,” he cried aloud, “I never knew what those two little letters meant before—not till I face them this way, on the Edge of Things!”
He gathered the mob together and led them against the jail—with hoots and shouts and curses; with flaming torches, and crow-bars, with axes and old guns.
“Lynch her—lynch the old witch! and hang that devil Conway with her!” was the shout.
In front of the jail they stopped, for a man stood at the door. His left arm was in a sling, but in his right hand gleamed something that had proved very deadly before. And he stood there as he had stood in the edge of the wood, and the bonfires and torches of the mob lit up more clearly the deadly pale face, set and more determined than before.
For as he stood, pale and silent, the shaft of a terrible pain,—of broken bone and lacerated muscle—twinged and twitched his arm, and to smother it and keep from crying out he gripped bloodlessly—nervously—the stock of his pistol saying over and over:
“I am a Conway again—a man again!”
And so standing he defied them and they halted, like sheep at the door of the shambles. The sheriff had flown, and Conway alone stood between the frenzied mob and the old woman who had given her all for him.
He could hear her praying within—an uncanny mixture of faith and miracle—of faith which saw as Paul saw, and which expected angels to come and break down her prison doors. And after praying she would break out into a song, the words of which nerved the lone man who stood between her and death:
“'I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger,
I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.
Do not detain me, for I am going
To where the streamlets are ever flowing.
I'm a pilgrim—and I'm a stranger
I can tarry—I can tarry but a night.'”
And now the bonfire burned brighter, lighting up the scene—the shambling stores around the jail on the public square, the better citizens making appeals in vain for law and order, the shouting, fool-hardy mob, waiting for Richard Travis to say the word, and he sitting among them pale, and terribly silent with something in his face they had never seen there before.
Nor would he give the command. He had nothing against Edward Conway—he did not wish to see him killed.
And the mob did not attack, although they cursed and bluffed, because each one of them knew it meant death—death to some one of them, and that one might be—I!
Between life and death “I” is a bridge that means it all.
A stone wall ran around the front of the jail. A small gate opened into the jail-yard. At the jail door, covering that opening, stood Edward Conway.
They tried parleying with him, but he would have none of it.
“Go back—” he said, “I am the sheriff here—I am the law. The man who comes first into that gate will be the first to die.”
In ten minutes they made their attack despite the commands of their leader, who still sat his horse on the public square, pale and with a bitter conflict raging in his breast.
With shouts and curses and a headlong rush they went. Pistol bullets flew around Conway's head and scattered brick dust and mortar over him. Torches gleamed through the dark crowd as stars amid fast flying clouds in a March night. But through it all every man of them heard the ringing warning words:
“Stop at the gateway—stop at the dead line!”
Right at it they rushed and crowded into it like cattle—shooting, cursing, throwing stones.
Then two fell dead, blocking the gateway. Two more, wounded, with screams of pain which threw the others into that indescribable panic which comes to all mobs in the death-pinch, staggered back carrying the mob with them.
Safe from the bullets, they became frenzied.
The town trembled with their fury.
All order was at an end.
And Edward Conway stood, behind a row of cotton bales, in the jail-yard, covering still the little gateway, and the biting pain in his shoulder had a companion pain in his side, where a pistol ball had ploughed through, but he forgot it as he slipped fresh cartridges into the chambers of his pistol and heard again the chant which came from out the jail window, like a ghost-voice from the clouds:
“Of that City, to which I journey,
My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light.
There is no sorrow, nor any sighing,
Nor any tears there, nor any dying...,
I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger,
I can tarry—I can tarry but a night.”
At a long distance they shot at Conway,—they hooted, jeered, cursed him, but dared not come closer, for he had breast-worked himself behind some cotton-bales in the yard, and they knew he could still shoot.
Then they decided to batter down the stone wall first—to make an opening they could rush through, and not be blocked in the deadly gateway.
An hour passed, and torches gleamed everywhere. Attacking the wall farther down, they soon had it torn away. They could now get to him. It was a perilous position, and Conway knew it. Help—he must have it—help to protect his flank while he shot in front. If not, he would die soon, and the law with him.
He looked around him—but there was no solution. Then he felt that death was near, for the mob now hated him more than they did the prisoner. They seemed to have forgotten her, for all their cry now was:
“Kill Conway! Kill the man who murdered our people!”
In ten minutes they were ready to attack again, but looking up they saw a strange sight.
Help had come to Conway. On one side of him stood the old Cottontown preacher, his white hair reflecting back the light from the bonfires and torches in front—lighting up a face which now seemed to have lost all of its kindly humor in the crisis that was there. He was unarmed, but he stood calm and with a courage that was more of sorrow than of anger.
By him stood the village blacksmith, a man with the wild light of an old, untamed joy gleaming in his eyes—a cruel, dangerous light—the eyes of a caged tiger turned loose at last, and yearning for the blood of the thing which had caged him.
And by him in quiet bravery, commanding, directing, stood the tall figure of the Captain of Artillery.
When Richard Travis saw him, a cruel smile deepened in his eyes. “I am dying myself,” it said—“why not kill him?”
Then he shuddered with the hatred of the terrible thing that had come into his heart—the thing that made him do its bidding, as if he were a puppet, and overthrew all the good he had gathered there, that terrible night, as the angels were driven from Paradise. And yet, how it ruled him, how it drove him on!
“Jim—Jim,” he whispered as he bent over his horse's neck—“Jim—my repeating rifle over the library door—quick—it carries true and far!”
As Jim sped away his master was silent again. He thought of the nobility of the things he had done that night—the touch of God that had come over him in making him save Helen—the beautiful dreams he had had. He thought of it all—and then—here—now—murdering the man whose life carried with it the life, the love of—
He looked up at the stars, and the old wonder and doubt came back to him—the old doubt which made him say to himself: “It is nothing—it is the end. Dust thou art, and unto dust—dust—dust—dust—” he bit his tongue to keep from saying it again—“Dust—to be blown away and mingle with the elements—dust! And yet, I stand here—now—blood—flesh—a thinking man—tempted—terribly—cruelly—poignantly—dying—of a poison in my veins—of sorrow in my heart—sorrow and death. Who would not take the dust—gladly take it—the dust and the—forgetting.”
He remembered and repeated:
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar—”
“'And cometh from afar,'” he whispered—“My God—suppose it does—and that I am mistaken in it all?—Dust—and then maybe something after dust.”
With his rifle in his hand, it all vanished and he began to train it on the tall figure while the mob prepared to storm the jail again—and his shot would be the signal—this time in desperate determination to take it or die.
In the mob near Richard Travis stood a boy, careless and cool, and holding in his hand an old pistol. Richard Travis noticed the boy because he felt that the boy's eyes were always on him—always. When he looked down into them he was touched and sighed, and a dream of the long-ago swept over him—of a mountain cabin and a maiden fair to look upon. He bit his lip to keep back the tenderness—bit his lip and rode away—out of reach of the boy's eyes.
But the boy, watching him, knew, and he said in his quiet, revengeful way: “Twice have I failed to kill you—but to-night—my Honorable father—to-night in the death that will be here, I shall put this bullet through your heart.”
Travis turned to the mob: “Men, when I fire this rifle—it will mean for you to charge!”
A hush fell over the crowd as they watched him. He looked at his rifle closely. He sprang the breech and threw out a shell or two to see that it worked properly.
“Stay where you are, men,” came that same voice they had heard so plainly before that night. “We are now four and well armed and sworn to uphold the law and protect the prisoner, and if you cross the dead line you will die.”
There was a silence, and then that old voice again, the voice that roused the mob to fury:
“I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger,
I can tarry—I can tarry but a night—”
“Lead us on—give the signal, Richard Travis,” they shouted.
Again the silence fell as Richard Travis raised his rifle and aimed at the tall figure outlined closely and with magnified distinctness in the glare of bonfire and torch. How splendidly cool and brave he looked—that tall figure standing there, giving orders as calmly as he gave them at Shiloh and Franklin, and so forgetful of himself and his own safety!
Richard Travis brought his rifle down—it shook so—brought it down saying to himself with a nervous laugh: “It is not Tom—not Tom Travis I am going to kill—it's—it's Alice's husband of only two days—her lover—”
“Shoot! Why don't you shoot?” they shouted. “We are waiting to rush—”
Even where he stood, Richard Travis could see the old calm, quiet and now triumphant smile lighting up Tom Travis's face, and he knew he was thinking of Alice—Alice, his bride.
And then that same nervous, uncanny chill ran into the very marrow of Richard Travis and brought his gun down with an oath on his lips as he said pitifully—“I am poisoned—it is that!”
The crowd shouted and urged him to shoot, but he sat shaking to his very soul. And when it passed there came the old half humorous, half bitter, cynical laugh as he said: “Alice—Alice a widow—”
It passed, and again there leaped into his eyes the great light Jud Carpenter had seen there that morning, and slipping the cartridges out of the barrel's breech, he looked up peacefully with the halo of a holy light around his eyes as he said: “Oh, God, and I thank Thee—for this—this touch again! Hold the little spark in my heart—hold it, oh, God, but for a little while till the temptation is gone, and I shall rest—I shall rest.”
“Shoot—Richard Travis—why the devil don't you shoot?” they shouted.
He raised his rifle again, this time with a flourish which made some of the mob think he was taking unnecessary risk to attract the attention of the grim blacksmith who stood, pistol in hand, his piercing eyes scanning the crowd. He stood by the side of Tom Travis, his bodyguard to the last.
“Jack—Jack—” kept whispering to him the old preacher, “don't shoot till you're obleeged to,—maybe God'll open a way, maybe you won't have to spill blood. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord.”
Jack smiled. It was a strange smile—of joy, in the risking glory of the old life—the glory of blood-letting, of killing, of death. And sorrow—sorrow in the new.
“Stand pat, stand pat, Bishop,” he said; “you all know the trade. Let me who have defied the law so long, let me now stand for it—die for it. It's my atonement—ain't that the word? Ain't that what you said about that there Jesus Christ, the man you said wouldn't flicker even on the Cross, an' wouldn't let us flicker if we loved Him—Hol' him to His promise, now, Bishop. It's time for us to stand pat. No—I'll not shoot unless I see some on 'em makin' a too hasty movement of gun-arm toward Cap'n—”
Had Richard Travis looked from his horse down into the crowd he had seen another sight. Man can think and do but one thing at a time, but oh, the myrmidons of God's legions of Cause and Effect!
Below him stood a boy, his face white in the terrible tragedy of his determination. And as Richard Travis threw up his empty rifle, the octagonal barrel of the pistol in the boy's hand leaped up and came straight to the line of Richard Travis's heart. But before the boy could fire Travis saw the hawk-like flutter of the blacksmith's pistol arm, as it measured the distance with the old quick training of a bloody experience, and Richard Travis smiled, as he saw the flash from the outlaw's pistol and felt that uncanny chill starting in his marrow again, leap into a white heat to the shock of the ball, and he pitched limply forward, slipped from his horse and went down on the ground murmuring, “Tom—Tom—safe, and Alice—he shot at last—and—thank God for the touch again!”
He lay quiet, feeling the life blood go out of him. But with it came an exhalation he had never felt before—a glory that, instead of taking, seemed to give him life.
The mob rushed wildly at the jail at the flash of Jack Bracken's pistol, all but one, a boy—whose old dueling pistol still pointed at the space in the air, where Richard Travis had sat a moment before—its holder nerveless—rigid—as if turned into stone.
He saw Richard Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a helpless, pitiful way,—then lie down as if it were sweet to rest.
And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid, numbed—pointing at the stars.
Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: “Stand back—all; Me—me alone, shoot—me! I who have so often killed the law, let me die for it.”
And then came to the boy's ears the terrible staccato cough of the two Colts pistols whose very fire he had learned to know so well. And he knew that the blacksmith alone was shooting—the blacksmith he loved so—the marksman he worshipped—the man who had saved his life—the man who had just shot his father.
Richard Travis sat up with an effort and looked at the boy standing by him—looked at him with frank, kindly eyes,—eyes which begged forgiveness, and the boy saw himself there—in Richard Travis, and felt a hurtful, pitying sorrow for him, and then an uncontrolled, hot anger at the man who had shot him out of the saddle. His eyes twitched wildly, his heart jumped in smothering beats, a dry sob choked him, and he sprang forward crying: “My father—oh, God—my poor father!”
Richard Travis looked up and smiled at him.
“You shoot well, my son,” he said, “but not quick enough.”
The boy, weeping, saw. Shamed,—burning—he knelt and tried to staunch the wound with a handkerchief. Travis shook his head: “Let it out, my son—let it out—it is poison! Let it out!”
Then he lay down again on the ground. It felt sweet to rest.
The boy saw his blood on the ground and he shouted: “Blood,—my father—blood is thicker than water.”
Then the hatred that had burned in his heart for his father, the father who had begot him into the world, disgraced, forsaken—the father who had ruined and abandoned his mother, was turned into a blaze of fury against the blacksmith, the blacksmith whom he had loved.
Wheeling, he rushed toward the jail, but met the mob pouring panic-stricken back with white faces, blanched with fear.
Jack Bracken stood alone on the barricade, shoving more cartridges into his pistol chambers.
The boy, blinded, weeping, hot with a burning revenge, stumbled and fell twice over dead men lying near the gateway. Then he crawled along over them under cover of the fence, and kneeling within twenty feet of the gate, fired at the great calm figure who had driven the mob back, and now stood reloading.
Jack did not see the boy till he felt the ball crush into his side. Then all the old, desperate, revengeful instinct of the outlaw leaped into his eyes as he quickly turned his unerring pistol on the object from whence the flash came. Never had he aimed so accurately, so carefully, for he felt his own life going out, and this—this was his last shot—to kill.
But the object kneeling among the dead arose with a smile of revengeful triumph and stood up calmly under the aim of the great pistol, his fair hair flung back, his face lit up with the bravery of all the Travises as he shouted:
“Take that—damn you—from a Travis!”
And when Jack saw and understood, a smile broke through his bloodshot, vengeful eyes as starlight falls on muddy waters, and he turned away his death-seeking aim, and his mouth trembled as he said:
“Why—it's—it's the Little 'Un! I cudn't kill him—” and he clutched at the cotton-bale as he went down, falling—and Captain Tom grasped him, letting him down gently.