The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 8

Finally, though he might well have forgotten him, the man whose trail he was now called to take in pursuit had once known him slightly, and if they met under such hostile auspices, might recognize and denounce him.

But the sheriff sat enthroned in his saddle and robed in the color of authority. At his back sat five other men with rifles across their pommels, and with such a situation there was no argument. The law's officer threw the bridle rein of the empty-saddled mount to the man in the road.

"Get up on this critter," he commanded tersely, "and don't let him git his head down too low. He follers buck-jumpin'."

When Grant, alias Colby, found that the men riding with him were more disposed to somber silence than to inquisitiveness or loquacity, he breathed easier. He even made a shrewd guess that there were others in that small group who answered the call of the law as reluctantly as he.

Sam Mosebury was accounted as dangerous as a rattlesnake, and Bud doubted whether even the high sheriff himself would make more than a perfunctory effort to come to grips with him in his present desperation.

When the posse had ridden several hours, and had come to a spot in the forest where the trail forked diversely, a halt was called. They had traveled steep ways and floundered through many belly-deep fords. Dust lay gray upon them and spattered mud overlaid the dust.

"We've done come ter a pa.s.s, now," declared the sheriff, "where hit ain't goin' ter profit us no longer ter go trailin' in one bunch. We hev need ter split up an' turkey tail out along different routes."

The sun had long crossed the meridian and dyed the steep horizon with burning orange and violet when Bud Grant and Mose Biggerstaff, with whom he had been paired off, drew rein to let their horses blow in a gorge between beetling walls of cliff.

"Me, I ain't got no master relish for this task, no-how," declared Mose morosely as he spat at the black loam of rotting leaves. "No man ain't jedgmatically proved ter me, yit, thet ther feller Sam kilt didn't need killin'."

Bud nodded a solemn concurrence in the sentiment. Then abruptly the two of them started as though at the intrusion of a ghost and, of instinct, their hands swept holsterward, but stopped halfway.

This sudden galvanizing of their apathy into life was effected by the sight of a figure which had materialized without warning and in uncanny silence in a fissure where the rocks dripped from reeking moss on either side.

It stood with a c.o.c.ked repeating rifle held easily at the ready, and it was a figure that required no heralding of its ident.i.ty or menace.

"Were ye lookin' fer me, boys?" drawled Sam Mosebury with a palpable enjoyment of the situation, not unlike that which brightens the eyes of a cat as it plays with a mouse already crippled.

With swift apprehension the eyes of the two deputies met and effected an understanding. Mose Biggerstaff licked his bearded lips until their stiffness relaxed enough for speech.

"Me an' Sim Colby hyar," he protested, "got summoned by ther high sheriff. We didn't hev no rather erbout hit one way ner t'other. All we've got ter go on air ther _dee_scription thet war give ter us--an'

we don't see no resemblance atween ye an' ther feller we're atter."

The murderer stood eying them with an amused contempt, and one could recognize the qualities of dominance which, despite his infamies, had won him both fear and admiration.

"Ef ye thinks ye'd ought ter take me along an' show me ter yore high sheriff," he suggested, and the finger toyed with the trigger, "I'm right hyar."

"Afore G.o.d, no!" It was Bud who spoke now contradicting his colleague.

"I've seed Sam Mosebury often times--an' ye don't no fas.h.i.+on faver him."

Sam laughed. "I've seed ye afore, too, I reckon," he commented dryly.

"But ef ye don't know me, I reckon I don't need ter know _you_, nuther."

The two sat atremble in their saddles until the apparition had disappeared in the laurel.

Gray-templed and seamed of face, d.y.k.e Cappeze entered the courthouse at Carnettsville one day a few months later and paused for a moment, his battered law books under his threadbare elbow, to gaze around the murky hall of which his memory needed no refres.h.i.+ng.

About the stained walls hung fly-specked notices of sheriff's sales, and between them stamped long-haired, lean-visaged men drawn in by litigation or jury service from branchwater and remote valley.

Out where the sun lay mellow on the town square was the brick pavement, on which Cappeze's law partner had fallen dead ten years ago, because he dared to prosecute too vigorously. Across the way stood the general store upon which one could still see the pock-marking of bullets reminiscent of that day when the Heatons and the Blacks made war, and terrorized the county seat.

d.y.k.e Cappeze looked over it all with a deep melancholy in his eyes. He knew his mountains and loved his people whose virtues were more numerous, if less conspicuous, than their sins. In his heart burned a militant insurgency. These hills cried out for development, and development demanded a conception of law broader gauged and more serious than obtained. It needed fearless courts, unterrified juries, intrepid lawyers.

He had been such a lawyer, and when he had applied for life insurance he had been adjudged a prohibitive risk. To-day the career of three decades was to end, and as the bell in the teetering cupola began to clang its summons he shook his head--and pressed tight the straight lips that slashed his rugged face.

On the bench sat the circuit-riding judge of that district; a man to whom, save when he addressed him as "your honor," d.y.k.e Cappeze had not spoken in three years. They were implacable enemies, because too often the lawyer had complained that justice waited here on expediency.

Cappeze looked at the windows bleared with their residue of dust and out through them at the hills mantling to an autumnal glory. Then he heard that suave--to himself he said hypocritical--voice from the bench.

"Gentlemen of the bar, any motions?"

Wearily the thin, tall-framed lawyer came to his feet and stood erect and silent for a moment in his long, black coat, corroding into the green of dilapidation.

"May it please your honor," he grimly declared. "I hardly know whether my statement may be properly called a motion or not. It's more a valedictory."

He drew from his breast pocket a bit of coa.r.s.e, lined writing paper and waved it in his talon-like hand.

"I was retained by the widow Sales, whose husband was shot down by Sam Mosebury, to a.s.sist the prosecution in bringing the a.s.sa.s.sin to punishment. The grand jury has failed to indict this defendant. The sheriff has failed to arrest him. The court has failed to produce those witnesses whom I have subpoenaed. The machinery of the law which is created for the sole purpose of protecting the weak against the encroachments of the malevolent has failed."

He paused, and through the crowded room the shuffling feet fell silent and heads bent excitedly forward. Then Cappeze lifted the paper in his hand and went on:

"I hold here an unsigned letter that threatens me with death if I persist with this prosecution. It came to me two weeks ago, and since receiving it I have redoubled my energy. When this grand jury was impaneled and charged, such a note also reached each of its members. I know not what temper of soul actuates those men who have sworn to perform the duties of grand jurors. I know not whether these threats have affected their deliberations, but I know that they have failed to return a true bill against Sam Mosebury!"

The judge fingering his gavel frowned gravely. "Does counsel mean to charge that the court has proven lax?"

"I mean to say," declared the lawyer in a voice that suddenly mounted and rung like a trumpeted challenge, "that in these hills of Kentucky the militant spirit of the law seems paralyzed! I mean to say that terrorism towers higher than the people's safeguards! For a lifetime I have battled here to put the law above the feud--and I have failed. In this courthouse my partner fought for a recognition of justice and at its door he paid the penalty with his life. I wish to make no charges other than to state the facts. I am growing old, and I have lost heart in a vain fight. I wish to withdraw from this case as a.s.sociate commonwealth counsel, because I can do nothing more than I have done, and that is enough. I wish to state publicly that to-day I shall take down my s.h.i.+ngle and withdraw from the practice of law, because law among us seems to me a misnomer and a futile semblance."

In a dead silence the elderly attorney came to his period and gathered up again under his threadbare elbow his two or three battered books.

Turning, he walked down the center aisle toward the door, and as he went his head sagged dejectedly forward on his chest.

He heard the instruction of his enemy on the bench, still suave:

"Mr. Clerk, let the order be entered striking the name of Mr. Cappeze from the record as a.s.sociate counsel for the commonwealth."

It was early forenoon when the elderly attorney left the dingy law office which he was closing, and the sunset fires were dying when he swung himself down from the saddle at his own stile in the hills and walked between the bee-gums and bird boxes to his door. But before he reached it the stern pain in his eyes yielded to a brightening thought, and as if responsive to that thought the door swung open and in it stood a slim girl with eyes violet deep, and a beauty so alluring and so wildly natural that her father felt as if youth had met him again, when he had begun to think of all life as musty and decrepit with age.

CHAPTER VI

Except in that narrow circle of American life which follows the doings and interests of the army and navy, the world had forgotten, in the several years since its happening, the court-martial and disgrace of John Spurrier--but Spurrier himself had not been able to forget.

His name had become forcefully identified with other things and, in the employ of Snowdon's company, he had been into those parts of the world which call to a man of energy and constructive ability of major calibre. But the joy of seeing mine fields open to the rush where there had been only desert before: of seeing chasms bridged into roadways had not been enough to banish the brooding which sprung from the old stigma. In remote places he had encountered occasional army men to remind him that he was no longer one of them and, though he was often doing worthier things than they, they were bound by regulations which branded him.

So Spurrier had hardened, not into outward crustiness of admitted chagrin, but with an inner congealing of spirit which made him look on life as a somewhat merciless fight and what he could wrest from life as the booty of conquest.

One day, in Snowdon's office after a more than usually difficult task had reached accomplishment, the chief candidly proclaimed justification for his first estimate of his aide, and Spurrier smiled.