“Oh, you are exaggerating the whole thing,” Carson said, with a flush of embarrassment.
“No I ain't, Carson Dwight,” Braider said, feelingly, and he took out his red cotton handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “You showed me that night the difference between bravery, so-called, and the genuine thing. I reckon bravery for personal gain is a weak imitation of bravery that acts just out of human pity as yours did that night. Well, that ain't all. The next day I was put to a worse test than ever. It was noised about, you know, that a bigger mob than the first was rising. I stayed out of the centre of town as much as I could, for everywhere I went folks would look at me as if they thought I'd surely do something to protect the prisoner, and at home my wife was whimpering around all day, saying she was sure Pete was innocent, or enough so to deserve a trial, if not for himself for the sake of his mammy and daddy. But what was such a wavering thing as I was to do? I took it that seventy-five per cent, of the men who had backed me with their ballot in my election was bent on lynching the prisoner, and if I opposed them they would consider me a traitor. On the other hand, I was up against this: if I did put up a feeble sort of opposition and gave in easy under pressure, the conservative men, like some we have here in town, would say I didn't mean business or I'd have actually opened fire on the mob. You see, boys, I wasn't man enough to take a stand either way, and though I well knew what was coming, I went about lying like a dog—lying in my throat, telling everybody that the indications showed that the excitement had quieted down. I went home that night and told my wife all was serene, and I drank about a quart of rye whiskey to keep me from thinking about the business and went to bed, but my conscience, I reckon, was stronger than my whiskey, for I rolled and tumbled all night. It seemed to me that I was, with my own hands, tying the rope around that pore nigger's neck. There I lay, a sworn officer of the law, flat on my back with not enough moral courage in my miserable carcass to have killed a gnat. Carson, if I saw you once before my eyes that long night, I saw you five hundred times. Your speech rang over and over in my ears. I saw you stand there when a ball had already grazed your brow and defy them to shoot again. I saw that poor black boy clinging to your knees, and knew that the light of Heaven had shone on you, while I lay in the hot darkness of the bottomless pit.”
“God, you do put it strong!” Garner exclaimed.
“I'm not putting it half strong enough,” the sheriff went on. “I don't deserve to hold office even in a community half run by mob law. But I ain't through. I ain't through yet. I got up early that awful morning, and went out to feed my hogs at a pen that stands on a back street, and there a woman milking a cow told me that it was over Pete Warren was done for—guilty or not, he was done for. I went in the house and tried to gulp down my breakfast, faced by my wife, who wouldn't speak to me, and showed in other ways what she thought about the whole thing. She was eternally sighing and going on about old Mammy Lindy and her feelings. I first went to the jail, and there I was told that two mobs had come, the first the Hillbend crowd, who did the work, and the bigger mob that got there too late.”
Braider's voice had grown husky and he coughed. Garner stole a searching glance of inquiry at Carson, but Dwight, his face suffused with a warm look of pity for the speaker, was steadily staring through the open door.
“I ain't done yet, God knows I ain't,” the sheriff gulped. “That morning I felt meaner than any convict that ever wore ball and chain. If I'd been tried and found guilty of stabbing a woman in the back I don't believe I could have felt less like a man. I tried to throw it all off by thinking that I couldn't have done any good anyway, but it wouldn't work. Carson, you and your plucky stand for the maintenance of law was before me, and you wasn't paid for the work while I was. Huh! do you remember seeing me as you came out of Blackburn's store that morning, with your hair all tousled up and your eyes looking red and bloodshot?”
“Yes, I remember seeing you,” said Dwight. “I would have stopped to speak to you but—but I was in a hurry to get home.”
“Well, you may have heard that I used to be a sort of a one-horse detective,” Braider went on, “and I had acquired a habit of looking for the explanation of nearly every unusual thing I saw, and—well, you coming out of that store before it was opened for trade, while the shutters in the front was still closed, struck me as odd. Then again, remembering your big interest in Pete's case, somehow, it didn't seem to me—meeting you sudden that way—that you looked quite as downhearted as I expected. In fact, I thought you appeared sort o' satisfied over something.”
“Oh!” Garner exclaimed, all at once suspecting Braider of a gigantic ruse to entrap them. “You thought he looked chipper, did you? Well, I must say he looked exactly the other way to me when I first saw him that day.”
“Well, it started me to wondering, anyway,” went on the sheriff, ignoring Garner's interruption, “and I set to work to watch. I hung about the restaurant across the street, smoking a cigar and keeping my eyes on that store. After awhile I saw Bob Smith go in the store and then Wade Tingle. Then I saw a big tray of grub covered with a white cloth sent from the Johnston House, and Bob Smith come to the door and took it in, sending the coon that fetched it back to the hotel. Well, I waited a minute or two and then sauntered, careless-like, across and went in. I chatted awhile with Bob and Wade, noticing, I remember, that for a newspaper man Wade seemed powerful indifferent about gathering items about what had happened, and that Blackburn was busy folding up a tangled lot of short pieces of white sheeting. All this time I was looking about to see where that waiter full of grub had gone. Not a sign of it was in sight, but in a lull in the talk I heard the clink of crockery somewhere below me, and I caught on. Boys, I'm here to tell you that never did a condemned soul feel as I felt. I went out in the open air praying, actually praying, that what I suspected might be true. I started for the jail and on the way met Burt Barrett. I asked him for particulars, and when he said that the Hillbend mob had left word that nobody need even look for the remains of the boy my heart gave a big jump in the same way as it had when that clip and saucer collided in that cellar. I asked Burt if he noticed which way the mob tuck the prisoner, and he said down towards town. I asked him if it wasn't odd for Hillbend folks to go that way to hang a man, and he agreed that it was. Well, to make a long story short, I was on to your gigantic ruse, and God above knows what a load it took off of me. You had saved me, Carson—you had saved me from toting that crime to my grave. I knew you were the ringleader, for I didn't know anybody else who would have thought of such a plan. You are a sight younger man than I am, but you stuck to principle, while I shirked principle, duty, and everything else. Doing all that was hurting your political chances, and you knew it, but you stuck to what was right all the same.”