In the clouds

by Charles Egbert Craddock

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!