CHAPTER IX
When the senate convened that day, strange and uncouth lookers-on stood ranged about the state house corridors, and their unblinking eyes took account of their chief adversary as he entered.
Upon his dark face, with its overhanging forelock, flickered no ghost of misgiving; no hint of any weakening or excitement. His gaze betrayed no interest beyond the casual for the men along the walls, whom report credited with a murderous hatred of himself.
Boone was fretting his heart out at the cabin of Saul Fulton while he knew that history was in the making at Frankfort, and on the evening of the twenty-ninth an eagerness to be near the focus of activity mastered him. The elements of right and wrong involved in this battle of political giants were, to his untrained mind, academic, but the drama of conflict was like a bugle-call – clear, direct and urgent.
He would not be immediately needed on the farm, and Frankfort was only fifteen miles away. If he set out at once and walked most of the night, he could reach the Mecca of his pilgrimage by tomorrow morning, and in his pocket was the sum of "two-bits" to defray the expenses of "snacks an' sich-like needcessities." For the avoidance of possible discussion, he slipped quietly out of the back door with no announcement to Saul's wife. With soft snowflakes drifting into his face and melting on his eyelashes, he began his march, and for four hours swung along at a steady three-and-a-half mile gait. At last he stole into a barn and huddled down upon a straw pile, but before dawn he was on the way again, and in the early light he turned into the main street of the state capital. His purpose was to view one day of life in a city and then to slip back to his uneventful duties.
The town had outgrown its first indignant surprise over the invasion of the "mountain army," and the senator from Kenton had passed boldly through its unordered ranks, as need suggested. The hill men had fallen sullenly back and made a path for his going.
This morning he walked with a close friend, who had constituted himself a bodyguard of one. The upper house was to meet at ten, and it was five minutes short of the hour when the man, with preoccupied and resolute features, swung through the gate of the state house grounds. The way lay from there around the fountain to the door set within the columned portico.
In circling the fountain, the companion dropped a space to the rear and glanced about him with a hasty scrutiny, and as he did so a sharp report ripped the quietness of the place, speedily followed by the more muffled sound of pistol shots.
The gentleman in the rear froze in his tracks, glancing this way and that in a bewildered effort to locate the sound. The senator halted too, but after a moment he wavered a little, lifted one hand with a gesture rather of weariness than of pain, and, buckling at the knees, sagged down slowly until he lay on the flag-stoned walk, with one hand pressed to the bosom of his buttoned overcoat.
Figures were already running up from here and there. As the dismayed friend locked his arms under the prone shoulders, he heard words faintly enunciated – not dramatically declaimed, but in strangely matter-of-fact tone and measure – "I guess they've – got me."
Boone Wellver saw a throng of tight-wedged humanity pressing along with eyes turned inward toward some core of excited interest, and heard the words that ran everywhere, "Goebel has been shot!"
He felt a sudden nausea as he followed the crowd at whose centre was borne a helpless body, until it jammed about the door of a doctor's office, and after that, for a long while, he wandered absently over the town.
Turning the corner of an empty side street in the late afternoon he came face to face with Asa Gregory, and his perplexed unrest gave way to comfort.
Asa was tranquilly studying a theatrical poster displayed on a wall. His face was composed and lit with a smile of quiet amusement, but before Boone reached his side, or accosted him, another figure rounded the corner, walking with agitated haste, and the boy ducked hastily back, recognizing Saul Fulton, who might tax him with truancy.
Yet when he saw Saul's almost insanely excited gaze meet Asa's quiet eyes, curiosity overcame caution and he came boldly forward.
"Ye'd better not tarry in town over-long, Asa," Saul was advising in the high voice of alarm. "I'm dismayed ter find ye hyar now."
"Why be ye?" demanded Asa, and his unruffled utterance was velvet smooth. "Hain't I got a license ter go wharsoever hit pleasures me?"
"This hain't no safe time ner place fer us mountain fellers," came the anxiety-freighted reply. "An' you've done been writ up too much in ther newspapers a'ready. You've got a lawless repute, an' atter this mornin' Frankfort-town hain't no safe place fer ye."
"I come down hyar," announced Asa, still with an imperturbable suavity, "ter try an' git me a pardon. I hain't got hit yit an' tharfore I hain't ready ter turn away."
Gregory began a deliberate ransacking of his pockets, in search of his tobacco plug, and in doing so he hauled out miscellaneous odds and ends before he found what he was seeking.
In his hands materialized a corn-cob pipe, some loose coins and matches, and then – as Saul's voice broke into frightened exclamation – several rifle and pistol cartridges.
"Good God, man," exploded the other mountaineer, "ain't ye got no more common sense than ter be totin' them things 'round in this town – terday?"
Asa raised his brows, and smiled indulgently upon his kinsman. "Why, ginrally, I've got a few ca'tridges and pistol hulls in my pockets," he drawled. "Why shouldn't I?"
"Well, git rid of 'em, an' be speedy about it! Don't ye know full well thet every mountain man in town's goin' ter be suspicioned, an' thet ther legislater'll vote more money than ye ever dreamed of to stretch mountain necks? Give them things ter the boy, thar."
Fulton had not had time to feel surprise at seeing Boone, whom he had left on the farm, confronting him here on the sidewalk of a Frankfort street. Now as the boy reached up his hand and Asa carelessly dropped the cartridges into it, Saul rushed vehemently on.
"Boone, don't make no mention of this hyar talk ter nobody. Take yore foot in yore hand an' light out fer my house – an' ther fust spring-branch ye comes ter, stop an' fling them damn things into ther water."
When the wires gave to the world the appalling climax of that savagely acrimonious campaign, a breathlessness of shock settled upon the State where passion had run its inflammatory course. The reiteration of Cassandra's prediction had failed to discount the staggering reality, and for a brief moment animosities were silenced.
But that was not for long. Yesterday the lieutenants of an iron-strong leader had bowed to his dominant will. Today they stood dedicated to reprisal behind a martyr – exalted by his mortal hurt.
It appeared certain that the rifle had barked from a window of the executive building itself – and when police and posses hastily summoned had hurried to its doors, a grimly unyielding cordon of mountaineers had spelled, in human type, the words "no admission."
The Secretary of State, who was a mountain man, was among the first to fall under accusation, and had the city's police officers been able to seize the Governor, he too would doubtless have been thrown into a cell. But the Governor still held the disputed credentials of office, and he sat at his desk, haggard of feature, yet at bay and momentarily secure behind a circle of bayonets.
Just wrath would not, and could not, long remain only righteous indignation. Out of its inflammation would spring a hundred injustices, and so in opposition to the mounting clamour for extreme penalties arose thundering the counter-voice of protest against a swift and ruthless sacrifice of conspicuous scapegoats.
To the aid of those first caught in the drag-net of vengeful accusation, came a handful of volunteer defence attorneys, and among them was Colonel Wallifarro.
The leader with the bullet-pierced breast was dying, and in the legislature the contest must be settled, if at all, while there was yet strength enough in his ebbing life currents to take the oath of office.
His last fight was in keeping with his life – the persistence of sheer resolution that held death in abeyance and refused surrender.
But when the Democratic majority of the assembly gathered at their chambers, they encountered muskets; when, casting dignity to the snowy winds, they raced toward an opera house, the soldiers raced with them, and arrived first. When they doubled like pursued hares toward the Odd Fellows' Hall, they found its door likewise barred by blade and muzzle.
Among the first men thrown into jail were Saul Fulton and his friend Hollins of Clay County. Their connection with the arrival of the mountaineers was not difficult to establish – and for the officers charged with ferreting out the ugly responsibility, it made a plausible beginning.
Meanwhile, the majority legislature, thwarted of open meeting, caucussed in hotel bedrooms, and gave decision for the dying candidate. A hectic and grotesque rumour even whispered that Mr. Goebel's gallant hold on life had slipped before the credentials could be placed in his weakened hand – and that the oath was solemnly administered to a dead body.
Boone had gone back to Saul's farm house, and on the way he had tossed the cartridges into a brook that flowed along the road, but his brain was in a swirl of perplexity and in his blood was an inoculation. He would never know content again unless, in the theatre of public affairs, he might be an onlooker or an actor.
CHAPTER X
A FEW days after that, he started back again to his mountains. With Saul in jail and his wife returning to her people, there was nothing further to hold him here. Indeed, he was anxious now to get home. Like one who has been bewildered by a plethora of new experiences, he needed time to digest them, and above all he wanted to talk with Victor McCalloway, whose wisdom was, to his thinking, as that of a second Solomon. There, too, was his other hero, Asa, who had returned to the hills as quietly as he had left them. Boone was burning to know whether, in the whirlpool of excitement there at Frankfort, his efforts to secure executive clemency had met with success or failure.
When, immediately upon crossing Cedar Mountain, he presented himself at McCalloway's house, he was somewhat nonplussed at the grave, almost accusing, eyes which the hermit gentleman bent upon him.
"I've jest got back hyar from ther big world down below," announced the boy, "an' I fared straight over hyar ter see ye fust thing." He paused, a little crestfallen, to note that reserve of silence where he had anticipated a warmth of welcome, and then he went on shyly: "Thar was hell ter pay down thar at Frankfort town – an' I seed a good part of ther b'ilin' with my own eyes."
Very slowly Victor McCalloway made response. "You have witnessed a tragedy – a crime for which the guilty parties should pay with their lives. Even then a scar will be left on the honour of your State."
Boone crowded his hands into his coat pockets and shivered in the wet wind, for as yet he had not been invited across the threshold.
"I don't know nothin' about who done hit," he made calm assertion. "But fellers like Saul Fulton 'peared ter 'low he plum needed killin."
"Fellows like Saul Fulton!"
The retired soldier drew a long breath, and his eyes narrowed. "You went down there, Boone, with a kinsman who now stands accused of complicity. The law presumes his innocence until it proves him guilty, but I'm not thinking of him much, just now. I'm thinking of you." He paused as if in deep anxiety, then added: "A boy may be led by reckless and wilful men into – well – grave mistakes… I believe in you, but you must answer me one question, and you must answer it on your word of honour – as a gentleman."
The boy's pupils widened interrogatively, and held those older eyes with an unfaltering steadiness. In their frank and engaging depths of blue, as open as the sky, Victor McCalloway read the answer to his question, and something like a sigh of relief shook him; something spasmodic that clutched at his throat and his well-seasoned reserve. He had dreaded that Boone might, in that fanatically bitter association, have brushed shoulders with some guilty knowledge. He had refused that fear lodgment in his thoughts as an ungenerous suspicion, but a lurking realization had persisted. It might need only a short lapse from a new concept to an inherited and ancient code to make heroes of "killers" for this stripling.
Slowly and candidly the boy spoke.
"On my word of honour as a gentleman – " His utterance hung hesitantly on that final word. It was a new thought that it might be applicable to himself, yet this man was a better and more exacting judge of its meaning than he, and his heart leaped to the quickened tempo of a new pride.
"I don't know nothin' – save thet I heered hit named aforehand thet men war acomin' from ther mountings ter see justice done, an' didn't aim ter be gainsaid ner thwarted, I 'lowed, though, hit would come about in fa'r fight – ef so-be hit bred trouble."
That same afternoon Asa Gregory happened by, and because McCalloway had come to recognize, in his influence, the most powerful feudal force operating upon the boy's thought, he waited somewhat anxiously to hear whether the man would express himself on the topic of the assassination. Since it was no part of wisdom to assail deep-rooted ferocities of thought in minds already matured beyond plasticity, he did not himself broach the matter, but he was pleased when Asa spoke gravely, and of his own volition.
"I done hed hit in head ter go along down thar ter Frankfort with them boys thet Saul gathered tergether, but now I'm right glad I went by myself. Thet war a mighty troublous matter thet came ter pass thar."
"Did ye git yore pardon, Asa?" asked Boone, and the older kinsman hesitated, then made a frank reply.
"I hain't talkin' much erbout thet, son. Ther Governor war hevin' a right stressful time, an' any favours he showed ter mountain men war bein' held up ergainst him by his enemies. But I reckon I kin trust both of ye… Yes, I got ther pardon."
Late in February an item of news filtered in through the ravines of the hills which elicited bitter comment. The legislature had voted a reward fund of $100,000 for the apprehension and conviction of those guilty of the assassination of Senator Goebel, and, heartened by this spurring, the pack of detectives, professional and amateur, had cast off full-cry.
Saul Fulton lay in jail all that winter without trial. Upon the motion of the Commonwealth, his day in court was postponed by continuance after continuance.
"I reckon," suggested Asa bluntly, "they aims ter let him sulter in jail long enough ter kinderly fo'ce him ter drag in a few more fellers besides himself – but hit won't profit 'em none."
That winter spent its dreary monotony, and through its months Boone Wellver was growing in mind and character, as well as in bone and muscle. McCalloway began to see the blossoming of his Quixotically fantastic idea into some hope and semblance of reality. The boy's brain was acquisitive and flaming with ambition, and Victor McCalloway was no routine schoolmaster but an experimenter in the laboratory of human elements. He was working with a character which he sought to bring by forced marches from the America of a quaint, broad-hearted past to the America of the present – and future. Under his hand the pupil was responding.
The slate-gray ramparts of the hills reeked with the wet of thawing snows. Watercourses swelled into the freshet-volume of the "spring-tide." Into the breezes crept a touch of softer promise, and in sheltered spots buds began to redden and swell. Then came the pale tenderness of greens, and the first shy music of bird-notes. The sodden and threadbare neutrality of winter was flung aside for the white blossoming of dogwood, and in its wake came the pink foam of laurel blossom.
On one of those tuneful days, while Boone sat on the doorstep of Victor McCalloway's house, listening to a story of a campaign far up the Nile, Asa Gregory came along the road, with his long elastic stride, and halted there. He smiled infectiously as he took the proffered chair and crumbled leaf tobacco between his fingers for the filling of his cob pipe.
For a while the talk ran in simple neighbourhood channels. They spoke of "drappin' an' kiverin'" in the corn fields, and the uncomplicated activities of farm life. But, after a time, Asa reached into his hip pocket and drew out a rumpled newspaper, which he tendered to Victor McCalloway.
"Mr. McCalloway," he said quietly, "ye're a friend of mine, an' right now I have sore need of counsel with a man of wisdom. I'd be beholden ter ye ef so be ye'd read thet thar printed piece out loud."
The retired soldier took the sheet, several days old, and with the first glance at its headlines, his features stiffened and his eyes blazed into indignation.
"This is a slander!" he exploded. "It's an infamous libel. Do you actually want me to read it aloud?"
Asa nodded, and, in a voice of protest, McCalloway gave audible repetition to a matter to which he refused the sanction of belief.
"New Murders for Old." That was the first headline, and the subheads and the item itself followed in due order:
"Commonwealth uncovers startling evidence… Asa Gregory indicted for firing fatal shot at Goebel… Alleged he received a pardon for prior offence as price of fresh infamy."
"Perhaps the most astounding chapter in a long serial of the bizarre and melodramatic came to light today when the Franklin Grand Jury returned a true bill against Asa Gregory, a notorious mountain feudist, charging him with the assassination of Governor Goebel. In the general excitement of those days, the presence of Gregory in the state capitol escaped notice. Now it develops, from sources which the Commonwealth declines at this time to divulge, that on the day of the tragedy Gregory, who already stands charged with the murder from ambush of several enemies, came cold-bloodedly to town to seek a pardon for one of these offences, and that in payment for that favour he agreed to accept unholy appointment as executioner of Governor Goebel. Gregory is now in hiding in the thicketed country of his native hills, and it is foreseen that before he is taken he may invoke the aid of his clansmen, and precipitate further bloodshed."
McCalloway laid down the paper and stared at the blossom-burgeoning slopes. It was strange, he reflected, that one could so swiftly yield to the instincts of these high, wild places. For just now it was in his heart to advise resistance. He thought that trial down there, before partisan juries and biased judges, would be a farce which vitiated the whole spirit of justice.
It might almost have been his own sentiments that he heard shrilled out from the excited lips of the boy; a boy whose cheeks had gone pale and whose eyes had turned from sky-blue to flame blue.
"They're jest a'seekin' ter git ye thar an' hang ye out of hand, Asa. Tell 'em all ter go everlastin'ly ter hell! Ye kin hide out hyar in ther mountains an' five hundred soldiers couldn't never run ye down. Ye kin cross over inter Virginny an' go wharsoever ye likes – but ef ye suffers yoreself ter be took, they'll hang ye outen pure disgust fer ther hills!"
Yes, thought Victor McCalloway, that was just about what would happen. The boy whom he had been educating to a new viewpoint had, at a stride, gone back to all the primitive sources of his nature, yet he spoke the truth. Then the voice of Asa Gregory sounded again with a measured evenness.
"What does ye think, Mr. McCalloway? I was thar on thet day. I kin hide out hyar an' resist arrest, like ther boy says, an' I misdoubts ef I could git any lavish of justice down thar."
"I doubt it gravely, sir," snorted McCalloway. "By Gad, I doubt it most gravely."
"An' yit," went on the other voice slowly, somewhat heavily, "ef I did foller thet course hit mout mean a heap of bloodshed, I reckon. Hit'd be mightily like admittin' them charges they're amakin' too." He paused a moment, then rose abruptly from his chair. "I come ter ask counsel," he said, "but afore I come my mind was already done made up. I'm agoin' over ter Marlin Town termorrer mornin' an' I'm agoin' ter surrender ter Bev. Jett, ther High Sheriff."
"Don't ye never do hit, Asa," shouted the boy. "Don't ye never do hit!" but McCalloway had risen and in his eyes gleamed an enthusiastic light.
"It's a thing I couldn't have advised, Mr. Gregory," he said, in a shaken voice. "It's a thing that may lead – God knows where – and yet it's the only decent thing to do."