“By the law,” said both officers in unison.
“Thar ain’t no law in the mountings, thank Gawd!” cried Tubal Sims.
“There is law here,” declared the sheriff, “and a plenty of it to go round.”
“Thank Gawd!” echoed the pious deputy.
“Come, old man!” said the sheriff. “Come in here an’ set down, an’ sorter straighten out, an’ tell me what in hell ailed ye to come bangin’ on the jail door with a weepon called a shootin’-iron till you git yourself arrested for crim’nal offense. Surely, surely, you have got some reason in you.”
He flung open a door close at hand, and Tubal Cain Sims, his knees trembling under him, so great was the nervous reaction in his metamorphosis from the masterful accuser to the despairing accused, was ushered into a room which seemed to him dark despite the glare of sunlight that fell broadside half across the bare floor from two tall windows,—a gaunt and haggard apartment suggestive of the intention of the building of which it was a part. These windows were not grated, but the fleckings of moving clouds barred the sunlight on the floor, and the mutter of thunder came renewed to the ear. The dust lay thick on the table in the centre of the room. A lounge covered with a startlingly gay quilt was in one corner, where Tubal Cain presumed the sheriff, in moments of fatigue which might be supposed to overpower even his stiff military figure in the deep midnight, slept with one eye open. A desk in the jamb by the fireplace held several bulky books, a large inkstand, a bag of fine-cut tobacco, a coarse glass tumbler which had nothing in it but a rank smell of a strong grade of corn whiskey, and a pipe half full of dead ashes, which the sheriff had hastily laid aside when summoned to the scene of the horrors perpetrated by a forlorn human being in the desperation of the fear of still greater horrors to come.
Tubal Cain Sims’s mind, unaccustomed to morbid influences, could not detach itself from the idea. Despite his absorptions on his own account, he followed as an independent train of thought futile speculations as to where in the building this man might be,—close at hand, and he felt a nervous thrill at the possible propinquity, or in some remote cell and out of hearing; what had he guiltily done, or was he falsely accused; had he been really resuscitated, or had the potentialities of life merely flickered up like the spurious quickening of a failing candle before the moment of extinction, and was he even now, while the officers lingered here, dead again, and this time beyond recall; or would he not, left to his own devices, once more attempt his life? The old mountaineer could not forbear. He turned to the sheriff with an excited eye.
“Ain’t ye ’feard he’ll hang hisself again?” he said huskily.
The officer stared. “Who?” he inquired, with knitted brow, as if he had forgotten the occurrence absolutely; then with renewing recollection, “You can bet your life he won’t.”
“Why not?” asked Sims, the clatter of his boots on the bare floor silent as he stopped short.