“So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry, which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on ’em, and also a heap of hens’ eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it’s her I’m chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the eggs hatched out, she didn’t stop to notice, but up and takes them down to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck figured out she’d made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the chickens were in heaven.”
The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage a little. “Now,” said he, “ain’t you boys just a trifle like that duck? I don’t know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I don’t know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for him we’ve got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it’s an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and—God forgive me!—I was one of them. I’ll tell you how that was. He looked enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We came on a cabin we’d never known of before, pretty far up in the hills—a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought. We knew we had caught him—that’s the way we felt. So we got our guns ready, and crept up close through the trees, and surrounded that cabin. We called him to come out, and he came with a book in his hands he’d been reading. He did look like the man, and boys!—we gave him no time! He never knew why we fired. He was a harmless old prospector who had got tired of poor luck and knocking around, and over his door he had painted some words: ‘Where the wicked cease from troubling.’ He had figured that up there by that mountain stream the world would let him alone. And ever since then I have thought my life belonged to him first, and me second. Now this afternoon I’m alone here. You know I can’t do much. And I’m going to ask you to help me respect the law. I don’t say that in this big country there may not be places, and there may not be times, when the law is too young or else too rotten to take care of itself, and when the American citizen must go back to bed-rock principles. But is that so in our valley? Why, if this prisoner is guilty, you can’t name me one man of your acquaintance who would want him to live. And that being so, don’t we owe him the chance to clear himself if he can? I can see that prospector now at his door, old, harmless, coming fearless at our call, because he had no guilt upon his conscience—and we shot him down without a word. Boys! he has the call on me now; and if you insist—”
The sheriff paused, satisfied with what he saw on the faces around him. Some of the men knew the story of the prospector—it had been in the papers—but of his part in it they had not known. They understood quite well the sacrifice he stood ready to make now in defending the prisoner. The favorable silence was broken by the sound of horses. Timeliness and discretion were coming up the hill. Drylyn at the same moment came out of the dead woman’s tent, and, looking down, realized the intended rescue. With his mind waked suddenly from its dull dream and opened with a human impulse, he ran to help; but the sheriff saw him, and thought he was trying to escape.
“That’s the man!” he shouted savagely to the ring.
Some of the Gap ran to the edge of the hill, and, seeing the hurrying Drylyn and the horses below, also realized the rescue. Putting the wrong two and two together, they instantly saw in all this a well-devised scheme of delay and collusion. They came back, running through the dance-hall to the front, and the sheriff was pinioned from behind, thrown down, and held.
“So ye were alone, were ye?” said the chatty neighbor. “Well, ye made a good talk. Keep quiet—we don’t want to hurt ye.”
At this supposed perfidy the Gap’s rage was at white-heat again; the men massed together, and fierce and quick as lightning the messenger’s fate was wrought. The work of adjusting the rope and noose was complete and death going on in the air when Drylyn, meaning to look the ground over for the rescue, came cautiously back up the hill and saw the body, black against the clear sunset sky. At his outcry they made ready for him, and when he blindly rushed among them they held him, and paid no attention to his ravings. Then, when the rope had finished its work, they let him go, and the sheriff too. The driver’s friend had left his horses among the pines, and had come up to see what was going on at the Gap. He now joined the crowd.
“You meant well,” the sheriff said to him. “I wish you would tell the boys how you come to be here. They’re thinking I lied to them.”
“Maybe I can change their minds.” It was Drylyn’s deep voice. “I am the man you were hunting,” he said.