CHAPTER XI
At the edge of Marlin Town stood the bungalow of the coal company's superintendent, and in its living-room, on either side of a document-littered table, sat two men. One of them, silvered of temple and somewhat portly of stature, leaned back with the tranquillity of complete relaxation after his day's work. His face wore the urbanity of well-being and prosperity, but the man across from him leaned forward with an attitude of nervous tension.
To Larry Masters there was something nettling in the very repose with which his visitor from Louisville crossed his stout and well-tailored legs. This feeling manifested itself in the jerky quickness of hand with which the mine superintendent poured whiskey into his glass and hissed soda after it from the syphon.
"Won't you fill up, Tom," he invited shortly. "The entertainment I can offer you is limited enough – but at least we have the peg at our disposal."
"Thank you – no more." Colonel Wallifarro spoke with a pleasingly modulated voice, trained into effectiveness by years of jury elocution. "I've had my evening's allowance, except for a night-cap."
Masters rose abruptly from his chair. He tossed down half the contents of his glass and paced the floor with a restless stride, gnawing at his close-cropped and sandy moustache. His tall, well-knit figure moved with a certain athletic vitality, and his florid face was tanned like a pig-skin saddle-skirt. But his brow was corrugated in a frown of discontent, and his pale blue eyes were almost truculent.
"By Gad, Tom," he flared out with choleric impetuosity, "you can put more righteous rebuke into a polite refusal of liquor than most men could crowd into a whole damned temperance lecture. I dare say, however, you're quite right. Life spells something for you. It's worth conserving. You've got assured position, an adoring family, money, success, hosts of friends. You'd be a blithering fool, I grant you, to waste yourself in indulgence, but I'm not so ideally situated. I 'take the cash and let the credit go.'"
"Yet you have, ahead of you, some ten or twelve years more of life than I can reasonably expect," was the quiet response. "You still have youth – or youth's fulfilment – early middle-age."
"And a jolly lot that means to me," retorted Masters, with acerbity. "I live here among illiterates, working for a corporation on a salary pared to the bone. At the time of life when one ought to be at the top of one's abilities, I'm the most pathetic human thing under God's arching sky – a man who started out with big promise – and fell by the wayside. Heaven help the man who fires and falls back – and if he can retrieve a bit of temporary solace from that poor substitute" – he jerked a forefinger toward the bottle – "then I say for Heaven's sake let him poison himself comfortably and welcome."
Colonel Wallifarro studied the darkened scowl of his companion for a moment before he replied, and when he spoke his own manner retained its imperturbability.
"I didn't offer gratuitous criticism, Larry," he suggested. "I merely declined another toddy."
"You know my case, Tom" – the younger of the two caught him up quickly; "you know that no younger son ever came out from England with fairer expectations of succeeding on his own. I've been neither the fool nor the shirk – and yet – " A shrug of disgust finished the sentence.
Colonel Wallifarro studied his cigar ash without rejoinder, and when Larry Masters failed to draw a return fire of argument, he sat for a minute or two glumly silent. Then, as his thoughts coursed back into other years, a slow light kindled in his eyes, as if for a dead dream.
"You were always sceptical about Middlesboro, even when others were full of faith – but why?" he demanded. "To you, with your Bluegrass ideas of fat acres, these hills must always be the ragged fringes of things, a meagre land without a future. It was only that you lacked imagination."
The speaker swept torrentially on with as much of argumentative warmth as though he had not just confessed himself ruined by reason of his own former confidence.
"Where the Gap came through lay the natural gateway of the hills, hewn out in readiness by the hand of the Almighty. There was water-power – ore. There was coal, for smelter and market, timber awaiting the axe and the saw-mill – the whole tremendous treasure house of a natural Eldorado."
"Perhaps," observed the Colonel, "and yet, when all is said and done, it was only a boom – and it collapsed. Whatever the causes, the results are definite."
"Yes, it collapsed, and we went with it." Masters paused to take up and empty the glass which had started the discussion, then with a heightened excitement he swept on afresh:
"Yet how near we came! Gad, man, your own eyes saw our conception grow! You saw lots along what had been creek-bed trails sell at a footage-price that rivalled New York's best avenues, and you yourself recognized in me, for all your scepticism, a man with a golden future. Then – after all that – you saw me jolly well ruined – and yet you prate of what life may hold for me in the vigour of my middle-age."
"All that happened ten years back, however," the elder man equably reminded his companion. "It was the old story of a boom and a collapse – and one misfortune – even one disaster – need not break a man's spirit. You might have come back."
The eyes of the portly gentleman rested in a momentary glance on the bottle and glass, but that may have been chance. At least he did not mention them.
"You think I might have come back, do you?" The voice of the Englishman had hardened. "I don't want to be nasty or say disagreeable things. You've been a staunch friend to me – even when Anne found herself growing bitter against me. Well, I don't blame her. Her people had been leaders always. She had the divine right to an assured place in society, and I had failed. I suppose it was natural enough for her to feel that she'd been done in – but it happened to be the finish of me. I'd sweated blood to make Middlesboro – and I didn't have the grit left to commence over."
For the first time Colonel Wallifarro's attitude stiffened, bringing up his silver-crowned head defensively.
"Anne didn't leave you for financial reasons, Larry," he asserted steadily. "She's my kinswoman, and you are my friend, but no purpose is to be served by my listening to ex parte grievances from either of you."
Masters shrugged his shoulders. "I dare say you're quite right," he admitted. "But be that as it may, she did leave me – left me flat. If she didn't divorce me, it wasn't out of consideration for my feelings. It would almost have been better if she had. All I ever succeeded in doing for her was to make her the poor member of a rich family – and that's not enviable by half. And yet if I'd been a sheer rotter, I could scarcely have fared worse."
"If it wasn't consideration for you, at least it was for some one who should be important to you. As it is, your little girl isn't growing up under the shadow of a sensational divorce record."
The pale blue eyes of the Englishman softened abruptly, and the lips under the short-clipped moustache changed from their stiffness to the curvature of something like a smile. Into his expression came a lurking, half-shy ghost of winsomeness. "Yes, yes," he muttered, "the kiddie. God bless her little heart!"
After a moment, though, he drew back his shoulders with a jerk and spoke again in a harsher timbre.
"Anne has been fair enough with me about the child, though I'm bound to say I've been jolly well made to understand that it was only a chivalrous and undeserved sort of generosity. Well, the kiddie's almost twelve now, and before long she'll be a belle, too – poor, but related to all the first families."
Masters paused, and when he went on again it was still with the air of a repressed chafing of spirit.
"I dare say her mother will see to it that she doesn't repeat the mistake of the previous generation – marrying a man with only a splendid expectancy. Her heart will be schooled to demand the assured thing. That pointing with pride – a gesture which you Kentuckians so enjoy – well, with my little girl, it will all be done toward the distaff branch. There won't be much said about the wastrel father."
"Perhaps," suggested the other, "you are a little less than just."
"I dare say. She'll be a heart-breaker before long now – and listen, man" – Masters came a step nearer – "don't make any mistake about me either. When she's here, the bottle goes under lock and key. I play the game where she's concerned."
Colonel Wallifarro nodded slowly. "I know that, Larry," he hastily answered. "I know that. If the breach hadn't widened too far, I'd go as far as a man could to bring your family together again under one roof-tree."
"That's no use, of course," admitted Masters with a dead intonation. "Only remember that down here where I'm chained to my little job, life ain't so damned gay and sunny at best – and don't begrudge me my liquor."
CHAPTER XII
During those following months, when Asa Gregory lay in jail, first in Frankfort, then in Louisville, as a prisoner of state, who had been denied bail, the boy back in the laurel-mantled hills smouldered with passionate resentment for what he believed to be a monstrous injustice. In his quest of education he sought refuge from the bitter brooding that had begun to mar his young features with its stamp of sullenness. Asa had killed men before, but it had been in that feud warfare which was sanctioned by his own conscience. Now he stood charged with a murder done for hire, the mercenary taking off of a man for whom he had no enmity save that of the abstract and political. Upon his kinsman's innocence the boy would have staked his life, and yet he must look helplessly on and see him thrown to the lions of public indignation.
Of Saul, he hardly thought at all. Saul was small-fry. The Commonwealth would treat him as such, but upon Asa it would wreak a surcharged anger, because to send Asa Gregory to the gallows would be to establish a direct link between the Governor who had pardoned him and mountain murder-lust.
Already the Secretary of State had been disposed of with a promptitude which, his friends asserted, savoured rather of the wolf pack than the courtroom. The verdict had been guilty, and his case was now pending on a motion for rehearing.
Already, too, a stenographer, who had been in the employ of the fugitive Governor, had been given a life sentence and had preferred accepting it without appeal to risking the graver alternative of the gallows.
As he lay in jail waiting until the slow grind of the law-mill should bring him into its hopper, Asa too recognized the extreme tenuousness of his chances.
But it was not until the wheat had been harvested and threshed in the rich bluegrass fields that the session of court was called to order, whose docket held for Asa Gregory the question of life and death.
That trial was to be at Georgetown, a graciously lying town about whose borders stretched estates, where a few acres were worth as much as a whole farm in the ragged and meagre hills. It was a town of kindly people, but just now of very indignant people, blinded by an unbalanced anger. It was not a hopeful place for a mountaineer with a notched gun who stood taxed with the murder from ambush of a governor.
Over the door of the brick court house stood an image of the blindfolded goddess. She was a weather-worn deity, corroded out of all resemblance to the spirit of eternal youthfulness which she should have exemplified, and Boone pressed his lips tight, as he entered with McCalloway, and noted that the scales which she held aloft were broken, but that the sword in the other hand was intact – and unsheathed.
At the stair head, in precaution against the electrically charged tension of the air, deputies passed outspread hands over the pockets and hips of each man who entered, in search for concealed weapons. About the semicircular table, fronting the bench and the prisoner's dock, sat the men of the press, sharpening their pencils and – waiting.
Under the faded portrait of Chief Justice Marshall a battery of windows let in the summer sun and the mellow voice of a distant negro, raised somewhere in a camp-meeting song.
Across a narrow alleyway were other windows in another building, and beyond them operators sat idling by newly installed telegraph keys. These men had no interest in the routine of the "running story." That was a matter to be handled by the regular telegraph offices. These newly strung wires would be dedicated to a single "flash" – when the climax came. Then the reporters would no longer be sitting at their crescent-shaped table. A few of them would stand framed in those courtroom windows under the portrait of Chief Justice Marshall, and as the words fell from the lips that held doom, their hands would rise, with one, two, three, or four fingers extended, as the case might warrant. In response to that prearranged signal, the special operators would open their keys and – if one finger had been shown – over their lines would run the single but sufficient word "death." Two fingers would mean "life imprisonment"; three, "acquittal"; four would indicate a "hung-jury." That time was still presumably far off, but the arrangement for it was complete.
In a matter of seconds after that grim pantomime occurred, foremen of printing crews standing by triple-decked presses in Louisville, in Cincinnati – in many other towns as well – would reach down and lift from the floor one of the several type metal forms prepared in advance to cover each possible exigency. A switch would be flipped. Back to the hot slag of the melting pots would go the other half-cylinders, and within three minutes papers, damp with ink and news, would be pouring from the maws of the presses into the hands of waiting boys.
To Boone these preparations were not yet comprehensible, but as McCalloway led him to a seat far forward he felt the tense atmosphere of place and moment.
He recognized, in those lines of opposing counsel, an array of notability. He picked out, with a glare of hatred, the bearded man whom the prosecution had brought as co-counsel, from another State, because of his great repute as a breaker-down of witnesses under cross-examination. Then his eyes lighted, as down the aisle came the full figure of Colonel Tom Wallifarro – to take its place among the attorneys for the defence. There was reassurance in his calmness and unexcited dignity.
And after interminable preliminaries, he heard the voice of the clerk droning from his docket, "The Commonwealth of Kentucky, against Asa Gregory; wilful murder," and after yet other delays the velvety direction from the bench, "Mr. Sheriff, bring the prisoner into court."
Asa's face, as he was led through the side door, was less bronzed than formerly, but his carriage was no less erect or confident. In a new suit of dark colour, with fresh linen instead of his hickory shirt, clean shaven and immaculately combed, the defendant was a transformed person, and if there remained any semblance of the highland desperado, it was to be found only in the catlike softness of his tread and the falcon alertness of his fine eyes. Pencils at the press table began their light scratching chorus – the reporters were writing their description of the accused.
Asa Gregory's line of defence had been foreshadowed in the examining court. He had sworn that he arrived on the day of the shooting to petition a pardon, and he had known nothing of what was in the air until, from street talk, he learned of the tragedy.
The chief issue of fact pivoted on his testimony that on that day he had not been near the state house or executive building. The Commonwealth would contradict that claim with the counter assertion that, straight as a hiving bee, Asa had hastened from the train to the Governor's official headquarters, where he had been cold-bloodedly rehearsed in his grim duties. After firing the shot, the prosecution would contend he had taken command of the other mountaineers who refused to the police the privilege of entry and search.
Through days, weeks even, after that, Boone sat, always in the same place, with steadfast confidence in the eyes which he bent upon his kinsman.
Into the press dispatches began to steal mention of a boy in a cheap but new suit of store clothes, whose eyes held those of the prisoner with a rapt and unwavering constancy. It was even said that the amazingly steady courage of the defendant seemed at times of unusual stress to lean on that supporting confidence, and that whenever they brought him from jail to courtroom, he looked first of all for the boy, as a pilot might look for a reef-light.
Shortly before the Commonwealth was ready to close, rumours went abroad. It was hinted that new and sensational witnesses would take the stand, with revelations as spectacular as the climax of a melodrama.
Boone had followed the evidence with a tense absorption. He had marked the effect of each point; the success or failure of every blow, and he realized what a powerful web was being woven about the man in whom he fully believed. There was no escaping the cumulative and strengthening effect of circumstance built upon circumstance.
He recognized, too, how like a keystone in an arch was the dependence of the State upon proving one thing: that Asa had been present, just after the shooting, and in command of those who barred the doors of the executive building against legitimate search. He took comfort in the fact that so far it had not been established by one sure piece of evidence. Then came the last of the Commonwealth's announced witnesses.
Upon the faces of the attorneys for the prisoner quivered a dubious expression of apprehension – as they waited the promised assault of the masked batteries. The son of the man who had walked at Senator Goebel's side, when he fell, took the stand and told with straightforward directness the story of the five minutes after the shot had sounded. He and a policeman had sought entrance to the building, which presumably harboured the assassin – and mountain men had halted him at the door, under the leadership of one to whom the rest deferred. He described that commander with fulness of detail, and it was as if he were painting in words a portrait of the man in the prisoner's dock.
"I was there as a volunteer – to see that no one who might be guilty escaped from the building," testified the witness with convincing candour. "I noticed one man in particular – because he seemed to be the unofficial leader of the rest. Some one called him Asa."
The man's voice was responsibly, almost hesitantly, grave, and on the faces in the jury box one could read the telling impression of his words.
Then the bearded attorney, whose fame was secure as a heckler of witnesses, rose dramatically from his chair.
"Do you see that man in the courtroom now?"
For a matter of seconds testifier and prisoner gazed with level directness into each other's eyes, while over the crowded courtroom hung a tense pall of stillness.
Then the witness spoke in a tone of bewilderment – his words coming slowly – as though they surprised himself.
"No. I don't think I see him here."
The poised figure of the lawyer, drawn statuesquely upright, winced as painfully as though a trusted hand had smitten him, and in his abrupt change of expression was betrayal of dismay and chagrin.
"You say – you can't – identify him!" he echoed incredulously.
Stubbornly the man who was testifying shook his head.
"May I explain in my own way?" he inquired, and as the lawyer barked raspingly back at him, the Court intervened:
"This is your own witness – You must understand the impropriety of attempting to force him."
"While I was looking at the defendant there, just now," went on the man in the chair, "I was seeing only his side face, and I was positive that he was the person I was describing. Feature for feature and line for line … the likeness seemed exact. I was willing to swear to it… But when he turned and faced me … I saw something else … and now I don't think he is the man."
The words came in a puzzled and dumfounded confession, and the witness paused, then went resolutely on again: "This man has a fine pair of clear and well-matched eyes, when one sees them both at once… That one at the door had something … I can't say just what it was … that marred one eye. I shouldn't call it a cast exactly … but they didn't match."
Abruptly the State dismissed that witness, and about the defence tables went quiet but triumphant smiles – which the jury did not miss, as the pencils of the press writers raced. But over Boone Wellver's face passed a shadow, and Asa, catching his eye across the heads of the crowd, read the motion of the boy's moving lips, as, without sound, they shaped the words, "Keep cool now, Asa! Keep cool."