Stepsons of Light Part 25

"If he shows up, send him to the back door, and I'll let him in. We're going to have a lynchin' bee presently."

"Why, that was me!" said Charlie.

"Oh, was it? Excuse me. I didn't recognize your voice. You was speakin' pretty low, you see. I was right round the corner. Dog heard you, and I heard the dog. Well, that's too bad. We could use another good man, right now." Mr. Gwinne spoke the last words with some annoyance. "Well, come on--let's get everything ready. You fellows had better scatter round on top of the cells. I reckon the iron is thick enough to turn a bullet. Anyhow, they can't see you. I'll put out the light. I'm going to have a devil of a time to keep this dog quiet.

I'll have to stay right with him or he'll bark and spoil the effect."

"They're coming," announced Spinal Maginnis, from a window. "Walkin'

quiet--but I hear 'em crossin' the gravel."

"By-by, Dinesy," said See. "I've been rolling my warhoop, like you said."

The jail was dark and silent. About it shadows mingled, scattered, and gathered again. There was a whispered colloquy. Then a score of shadows detached themselves from the gloom. They ranged themselves in a line opposite the jail door. Other shadows crept from either side and took stations along the wall, ready to rush in when the door was broken down.

A low whistle sounded. The men facing the door came forward at a walk, at a trot, at a run. They carried a huge beam, which they used as a battering ram. As they neared the door the men by the jail wall crowded close. At the last step the beam bearers increased their pace and heaved forward together.

Unlocked, unbolted, not even latched, the door flung wide at the first touch, and whirled cras.h.i.+ng back against the wall; the crew of the battering ram, braced for a shock, fell sprawling across the threshold. Reserves from the sides sprang over them, too eager to note the ominous ease of that door forcing, and plunged into the silent darkness of the jail.

They stiffened in their tracks. For a shaft of light swept across the dark, a trembling cone of radiance, a dancing light on the clump of masked men who shrank aside from that s.h.i.+ning circle, on a doorway where maskers crowded in. A melancholy voice floated through the darkness.

"Come in," said Gwinne. "Come in--if you don't mind the smoke."

The lynchers crowded back, they huddled against the walls in the darkness beyond that cone of dazzling light.

"Are you all there?" said Gwinne. His voice was bored and listless.

"Shaw, Ellis, Clark, Clancy, Tucker, Woodard, Bruno, Toad Hales--"

"I want Sim!" announced Charlie See's voice joyously. "Sim is mine.

Somebody show me which is Sim! Is that him pus.h.i.+n' back toward the door?"

A clicking sound came with the words, answered by similar clickings here and there in the darkness.

"Tom Ross has got Sim covered," said the unhurried voice of Spinal Maginnis. "You and Hiram Yoast be sure to get that big fellow in front. I got my man picked."

A chuckle came from across the way. "You, Vet Blackman! Remember what I told you? This is me--Buck Hamilton. You're my meat!"

"Oh, keep still and let me call the roll," complained Gwinne's voice--which seemed to have s.h.i.+fted its position. "Kroner, Jody Weir, Eastman, Wiley, Hover, Lithpin Tham--"

The beam of light s.h.i.+fted till it lit on the floor halfway down the corridor; it fell on three boxes there.

From the outer box a cord led up through the quivering light. This cord tightened now, and raised a door at the end of the box; another cord tilted the box steeply.

"Look! Look! Look!" shrieked someone by the door.

Two rattlesnakes slid squirming from the box into that glowing circle--they writhed, coiled, swayed. _Z-z-z--B-z-z-zt!_ The light went out with a snap.

"Will you fire first, gentlemen of the blackguards?" said Gwinne.

Someone screamed in the dark--and with that scream the mob broke.

Crowding, cursing, yelling, trampling each other, fighting, the lynchers jammed through the door; they crashed through a fence, they tumbled over boulders--but they made time. A desultory fusillade followed them; merely for encouragement.

XII

"Ostrich, _n._ A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied the hinder toe in which so many pious naturalists have seen a conspicuous evidence of design. The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly."

--_The Devil's Dictionary._

"Fare you well: Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you."

--_As You Like It._

Mr. Benjamin Attlebury Wade paced a narrow beat on the matted floor.

Johnny Dines, s.h.i.+rt-sleeved, in the prisoners' box, leaned forward in his chair to watch, delighted. Mr. Benjamin Attlebury Wade was prosecuting attorney, and the mat was within the inclosure of the court room, marked off by a wooden rail to separate the law's machinery from the materi--That has an unpleasant sound. To separate the taxpayer from--No, that won't do. To separate the performers from the spectators--that is much better. But even that has an offensive sound. Unintentionally so; groping, we near the heart of the mystery; the rail was to keep back the crowd and prevent confusion. That it has now become a sacramental barrier, a symbol and a sign of esoteric mystery, is not the rail's fault; it is the fault of the people on each side of the rail. Mr. Wade had been all the long forenoon examining Caney and Weir, and was now searching the deeps of his mind for a last question to put to Mr. Hales, his last witness. Mr. Wade's brow was furrowed with thought; his hands were deep in his own pockets. Mr. Wade's walk was leisurely important and fascinating to behold. His foot raised slowly and very high, very much as though those pocketed hands had been the lifting agency. When he reached the highest point of each step his toe turned up, his foot paused, and then felt furtively for the floor--quite as if he were walking a rope, or as if the floor might not be there at all. The toe found the floor, the heel followed cautiously, they planted themselves on the floor and took a firm grip there; after which the other foot ventured forward.

With such stealthy tread the wild beast of prey creeps quivering to pounce upon his victim. But Mr. Wade never leaped. And he was not wild.

The court viewed Mr. Wade's const.i.tutional with some impatience, but Johnny Dines was charmed by it; he felt a real regret when Mr. Wade turned to him with a ferocious frown and snapped: "Take the witness!"

Mr. Wade parted his coat tails and sat down, performing that duty with the air of a sacrament. Johnny did not rise. He settled back comfortably in his chair and looked benevolently at the witness.

"Now, Mr. Hales, about that yearling I branded in Redgate canon--what color was it?"

Mr. Wade rose, indignant.

"Your honor, I object! The question is irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial. Aside from its legal status, such a question is foolish and absurd, and an insult to the court."

"Why, now, I didn't object to any of your foolish and absurd questions all morning." Johnny's eyes widened with gentle reproach. "I let you ask all the questions you wanted."

Mr. Wade's nose twisted to a triumphant sneer.

"'He who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client!'"

"I didn't want to take any unfair advantage," explained Johnny.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" expostulated the court.

"You gallows meat!" snarled Wade. "You dirty--"

Johnny shook his head in a friendly warning. "He means you, too," he whispered.

The gavel fell heavily. The court rose up and the court's eyes narrowed.

"This bickering has got to stop! It is disgraceful. I don't want to see any more of it. Mr. Wade, for that last remark of yours you ought to pay a heavy fine, and you know it very well. This prisoner is being tried for murder. That does not make him a murderer. Your words were unmanly, sir."

"May it please the court," said Wade, white faced and trembling with rage, "I acknowledge myself entirely wrong, and I beg the court's pardon. I own that I was exasperated. The prisoner insulted me grossly."

"You insulted him first. You have been doing it right along. You lawyers are always browbeating witnesses and prisoners. You get 'em where they can't talk back and then you pelt 'em with slurs and hints and sneers and insults. You take a mean advantage of your privileged position to be overbearing and arrogant. I've watched you at it. I don't think it is very sporting to say in the court room what you wouldn't dare say on the street. But when someone takes a whack at you--wow! that's different! Then you want the court to protect you."

He paused to consider.