The Shepherd of the North

by Richard Aumerle Maher

Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision.

He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the 257 jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?

Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did not seem to notice the Judge’s anger in cautioning him not to mention the fire again.

At his counsel’s direction, he went through a lifeless pantomime of falling upon one knee and pointing his rifle at the fleeing man. Now the man turned and faced him. Then he heard the shot which killed Rogers come from the woods. He dropped his own rifle and went forward to look at the dying man. He picked up the torch and threw it away.

Then he turned to fight the fire. (This time the Judge did not rule out the word.) Then his rifle had exploded in his hands, the bullet going just past his ear. The charge had scorched his neck. It was a simple story. The thing might 258 have happened. It was entirely credible. There were no contradictions in it. But the manner of Jeffrey Whiting, telling it, gave no feeling of reality. It was not the manner of a man telling one of the most stirring things of his life. He was not telling what he saw and remembered and felt and was now living through. Rather, he seemed to be going over a wearying, many-times-told tale that he had rehearsed to tedium. A sleeping man might have told it so. The jury was left entirely unconvinced, though puzzled by the manner of the recital.

Even Lemuel Squires’ harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly without any thought of what the District Attorney was trying to make him say. He was not thinking of the District Attorney nor of the story. He was still gazing mentally in stupid wonder at the horrible fact that Ruth Lansing had lied his life away at the word of her church.

When he had gotten back to the little railed enclosure where he was again the prisoner, he sat down heavily to wait for the end of this wholly irrelevant business of the trial. Another witness was called. He did not know that there was another. He had expected that Squires would begin his speech at once.

He noticed that this witness was a girl from 259 French Village whom he had seen several times. Now he remembered that she was Rafe Gadbeau’s girl. What did they bring her here for? She could not know anything, and why did they want to pester the poor thing? Didn’t the poor little thing look sorry and troubled enough without fetching her down here to bring it all up to her? He roused himself to look reassuringly at the girl, as though to tell her not to mind, that it did not matter anyway, that he knew she could not help him, and that she must not let them hurt her.

Dardis, to forestall objections and to ensure Cynthe against interruptions from the prosecutor or the Judge, had told her to say nothing about fire but to speak directly about the killing of Rogers and nothing else. So when, after she had been sworn, he told her to relate the things that led up to the killing, she began at the very beginning:

“Four years ago,” she said, “Rafe Gadbeau was in Utica. A man was killed in a crowd. His knife had been used to kill the man. Rafe Gadbeau did not do that. Often he has sworn to me that he did not know who had done it. But a detective, a man named Rogers, found the knife and traced it to Rafe Gadbeau. He did not arrest him. No, he kept the knife, saying that some day he would call upon Rafe Gadbeau for the price of his silence.