The excitement caused by this frightful crime was intense. Every man quit work. A great crowd assembled. Morton as sheriff was very busy, and loud threats were uttered by his satellites as to the apprehension of the murderers. The temper of the crowd, however, was sullen. No man dared trust his neighbour, and yet every honest breast swelled with impotent indignation at this wholesale and unprovoked massacre. No clue was possible. Everybody 347 remembered, of course, how broadcast and publicly the fact of the gold had been scattered. Nobody dared utter his suspicions, if he had any.
The victims were buried by a large concourse, that eddied and hesitated and muttered long after the graves had been filled in. Vaguely it was felt that the condition of affairs was intolerable; but no one knew how it was to be remedied. Nothing definite could be proved against any one, and yet I believe that every honest man knew to a moral certainty at least the captains and instigators of the various outrages. A leader could have raised an avenging mob–provided he could have survived the necessary ten minutes!
We scattered at last to our various occupations. I was too much upset to work, so I returned to where Yank was smoking over the fire. He had, as near as I can remember, said not one word since the discovery of the tragedy. On my approach he took his pipe from his mouth.
“Nothing done?” he inquired.
“Nothing,” I replied. “What is there to be done?”
“Don’t know,” said he, replacing his pipe; then around the stem of it, “I was fond of those people.”
“So was I,” I agreed sincerely. “Have you thought what a lucky escape you yourself had?”
Yank nodded. We sat for a long time in silence. My thoughts turned slowly and sullenly in a heavy, impotent anger. A small bird chirped plaintively from the thicket near at hand. Except for the tinkle of our little stream and the muffled roar of the distant river, this was the only sound to strike across the dead black silence of the autumn night. So persistently did the bird utter its single call 348 that at last it aroused even my downcast attention, so that I remarked on it carelessly to Yank. He came out of his brown study and raised his head.
“It’s no bird, it’s a human,” he said, after listening a moment. “That’s a signal. Go see what it is. Just wander out carelessly.”
In the depths of the thicket I found a human figure crouched. It glided to me, and I made out dimly the squat form of Pete, Barnes’s negro slave, from the hotel.