Chapter V: Preface (5)

But the driver had perfectly understood the sheriff's glance, and he was on the sheriff's side, though he showed no sign. As he drove along he began thinking about the way the prisoner had cried out just now, and the inconsiderable value of the dust, and it became clear in his mind that this was a matter for a court and twelve quiet men. The friend beside him was also intent upon his own thoughts, and neither said a word to the other upon the lonely road. The horses soon knew that they were not being driven any more, and they slackened their pace, and finding no reproof came for this, they fell to a comfortable walk. Presently several had snatched a branch in passing, and it waved from their mouths as they nibbled. After that they gave up all pretence at being stage-horses, and the driver noticed them. From habit he whipped them up into shape and gait, and the next moment pulled them in short, at the thought that had come to him. The prisoner must be got away from the Gap. The sheriff was too single-handed among such a crowd as that, and the driver put a question to his friend. It could be managed by taking a slight liberty with other people's horses; but Wells and Fargo would not find fault with this when the case was one of their own servants, hitherto so well thought of. The stage, being empty and light, could spare two horses and go on, while those two horses, handled with discretion and timeliness, might be very useful at the Gap. The driver had best not depart from rule so far as to leave his post and duty; one man would be enough. The friend thought well of this plan, and they climbed down into the road from opposite sides and took out the wheelers. To be sure these animals were heavy, and not of the best sort for escaping on, but better than walking; and timeliness and discretion can do a great deal. So in a little while the driver and his stage were gone on their way, the friend with the two horses had disappeared in the wood, and the road was altogether lonely.

The sheriff's brain was hard at work, and he made no protest now as he walked along, passive in the company of the miners and their prisoner. The prisoner had said all that he had to say, and his man's firmness, which the first shock and amazement had wrenched from him, had come to his help again, bringing a certain shame at having let his reserve and bearing fall to pieces, and at having made himself a show; so he spoke no more than his grim captors did, as they took him swiftly through the wood. The sheriff was glad it was some miles they had to go; for though they went very fast, the distance and the time, and even the becoming tired in body, might incline their minds to more deliberation. He could think yet of nothing new to urge. He had seen and heard only the same things that all had, and his present hopes lay upon the Gap and what more might have come to light there since his departure. He looked at Drylyn, but the miner's serious and massive face gave him no suggestion; and the sheriff's reason again destroyed the germ of suspicion that something plainly against reason had several times put in his thoughts. Yet it stuck with him that they had hold of the wrong man.

When they reached the Gap, and he found the people there as he had left them, and things the same way, with nothing new turned up to help his theory, the sheriff once more looked round; but Drylyn was not in the crowd. He had gone, they told him, to look at _her_; he had set a heap of store by her, they repeated.

"A heap of store," said the sheriff, thinking. "Where is she now?"

"On her bed," said a woman, "same as ever, only we've fixed her up some."

"Then I'll take a look at her--and him. You boys won't do anything till I come back, will you?"

"Why, if ye're so anxious to see us do it, sheriff," said the chatty neighbor, "I guess we can wait that long fer ye."

The officer walked to the tent. Drylyn was standing over the body, quiet and dumb. He was safe for the present, the sheriff knew, and so he left him without speaking and returned to the prisoner and his guard in front of the dance-hall. He found them duly waiting; the only change was that they had a rope there.

"Once upon a time," said the sheriff, "there was a man in Arkansaw that had no judgment."

"They raise 'em that way in Arkansaw," said the chatty neighbor, as the company made a circle to hear the story--a tight, cautious circle--with the prisoner and the officer beside him standing in the centre.

"The man's wife had good judgment," continued the narrator, "but she went and died on him."

"Well, I guess that _was_ good judgment," said the neighbor.

"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.

They looked at him seriously, as one looks at a friend whom an illness has seized. The storm of feeling had spent itself, the mood of the Gap was relaxed and torpid, and the serenity of coming dusk began to fill the mountain air.

"You boys think I'm touched in the head," said Drylyn, and paused. "This knife done it," said he. "This one I'm showing you."

They looked at the knife in his hand.

"He come between me and her," Drylyn pursued. "I was aiming to give him his punishment myself. That would have been square." He turned the knife over in his hand, and, glancing up from it, caught the look in their eyes. "You don't believe me!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Well, I'm going to make you. Sheriff, I'll bring you some evidence."

He walked to the creek, and they stood idle and dull till he returned. Then they fell back from him and his evidence, leaving him standing beneath the dead man.

"Does them look like being touched in the head?" inquired Drylyn, and he threw down the overalls, which fell with a damp slap on the ground. "I don't seem to mind telling you," he said. "I feel as quiet--as quiet as them tall pines the sun's just quittin' for the night." He looked at the men expectantly, but none of them stirred. "I'd like to have it over," said he.

Still no one moved.

"I have a right to ask it shall be quick," he repeated. "You were quick enough with him." And Drylyn lifted his hand towards the messenger.

They followed his gesture, staring up at the wrong man, then down at the right one. The chatty neighbor shook his head. "Seems curious," he said, slowly. "It ought to be done. But I couldn't no more do it--gosh! how _can_ a man fire his gun right after it's been discharged?"

The heavy Drylyn looked at his comrades of the Gap. "You won't?" he said.

"You better quit us," suggested the neighbor. "Go somewheres else."

Drylyn's eyes ran painfully over ditch and diggings, the near cabins and the distant hills, then returned to the messenger. "Him and me," he muttered. "It ain't square. Him and me--" Suddenly he broke out, "I don't choose him to think I was that kind of man!"

Before they could catch him he fell, and the wet knife slid from his fingers. "Sheriff," he began, but his tone changed. "I'm overtakin' him!" he said. "He's going to know now. Lay me alongside--"

And so they did.

THE SECOND MISSOURI COMPROMISE