The Tempering

by Charles Neville Buck

Across a narrow alleyway were other windows in another building, and beyond them operators sat idling by newly installed telegraph keys. These men had no interest in the routine of the "running story." That was a matter to be handled by the regular telegraph offices. These newly strung wires would be dedicated to a single "flash"—when the climax came. Then the reporters would no longer be sitting at their crescent-shaped table. A few of them would stand framed in those courtroom windows under the portrait of Chief Justice Marshall, and as the words fell from the lips that held doom, their hands would rise, with one, two, three, or four fingers extended, as the case might warrant. In response to that prearranged signal, the special operators would open their keys and—if one finger had been shown—over their lines would run the single but sufficient word "death." Two fingers would mean "life imprisonment"; three, "acquittal"; four would indicate a "hung-jury." That time was still presumably far off, but the arrangement for it was complete.

In a matter of seconds after that grim pantomime occurred, foremen of printing crews standing by triple-decked presses in Louisville, in Cincinnati—in many other towns as well—would reach down and lift from the floor one of the several type metal forms prepared in advance to cover each possible exigency. A switch would be flipped. Back to the hot slag of the melting pots would go the other half-cylinders, and within three minutes papers, damp with ink and news, would be pouring from the maws of the presses into the hands of waiting boys.

To Boone these preparations were not yet comprehensible, but as McCalloway led him to a seat far forward he felt the tense atmosphere of place and moment.

He recognized, in those lines of opposing counsel, an array of notability. He picked out, with a glare of hatred, the bearded man whom the prosecution had brought as co-counsel, from another State, because of his great repute as a breaker-down of witnesses under cross-examination. Then his eyes lighted, as down the aisle came the full figure of Colonel Tom Wallifarro—to take its place among the attorneys for the defence. There was reassurance in his calmness and unexcited dignity.

And after interminable preliminaries, he heard the voice of the clerk droning from his docket, "The Commonwealth of Kentucky, against Asa Gregory; wilful murder," and after yet other delays the velvety direction from the bench, "Mr. Sheriff, bring the prisoner into court."

Asa's face, as he was led through the side door, was less bronzed than formerly, but his carriage was no less erect or confident. In a new suit of dark colour, with fresh linen instead of his hickory shirt, clean shaven and immaculately combed, the defendant was a transformed person, and if there remained any semblance of the highland desperado, it was to be found only in the catlike softness of his tread and the falcon alertness of his fine eyes. Pencils at the press table began their light scratching chorus—the reporters were writing their description of the accused.

Asa Gregory's line of defence had been foreshadowed in the examining court. He had sworn that he arrived on the day of the shooting to petition a pardon, and he had known nothing of what was in the air until, from street talk, he learned of the tragedy.

The chief issue of fact pivoted on his testimony that on that day he had not been near the state house or executive building. The Commonwealth would contradict that claim with the counter assertion that, straight as a hiving bee, Asa had hastened from the train to the Governor's official headquarters, where he had been cold-bloodedly rehearsed in his grim duties. After firing the shot, the prosecution would contend he had taken command of the other mountaineers who refused to the police the privilege of entry and search.

Through days, weeks even, after that, Boone sat, always in the same place, with steadfast confidence in the eyes which he bent upon his kinsman.

Into the press dispatches began to steal mention of a boy in a cheap but new suit of store clothes, whose eyes held those of the prisoner with a rapt and unwavering constancy. It was even said that the amazingly steady courage of the defendant seemed at times of unusual stress to lean on that supporting confidence, and that whenever they brought him from jail to courtroom, he looked first of all for the boy, as a pilot might look for a reef-light.