Читать книгу Paul Rundel - Will N. Harben - Страница 17

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And thither Hoag led his horse. On the edge of the sidewalk a negro was washing the dust from a new buggy with a sponge and a pail of water. Another negro close by was trimming the mane and tail of a horse with a big pair of clicking shears. They had been conversing in low, earnest tones, but they ceased and applied themselves vigorously to work as the tanner approached.

“Hold my hoss,” he said to the man with the pail. “Is Sid about?”

“Back inside, boss.” The negro touched his hat, swept a broad, flat foot backward, and took the bridle. “Leastwise, he was, suh, des er minute ergo. He was talkin' ter er gipsy dat had er muel ter swap. Dey didn't come ter no trade, dough. I know, kase de gipsy rid his muel off up de street.”

Hoag turned into the stable, which was a spacious structure with wide doors at each end, bare, brown rafters overhead, and a storm-shattered shingle roof, which in places let in rifts of sunshine and exposed bits of sky. On either side of a wide passage, from end to end of the building, were stalls, some occupied by horses, and all smelling of manure and musty hay. There was a sound of the champing of feeding animals, the swishing of tails, for the flies were plentiful, and the satisfied accompaniment of pawing hoofs on the soggy ground.

In the rear doorway stood a man who had just stepped into view from the yard in the rear. It was Trawley. He had a stick of soft pine in his hand, and was nervously whittling with a big pocket-knife, his broad, slouch hat pushed back on his head and turned up in front. Sid was quite as well known for the good stable he ran as for his fighting tendencies, the quick use of a “gun,” and general habits of brave recklessness.

Toward him, with a forced smile of companionship, Hoag walked, cautiously looking into the stalls as he passed.

“They are all in front,” Trawley said, reassuringly when they met; “but we don't want to be seen confabbin' together, to-day of all days.” He jerked his knife toward the yard. “Come out here whar it's quiet.”

With a steady stare of awakening wonder over Sid's unwonted caution Hoag followed, first into the open glare of the sun and then under the roof of a wagon-shed.

“If you hadn't come in, I was goin' to ride out to see you,” Trawley said, with a frown which lay heavily on his sharp-cut features. “I reckon you've heard—bad news travels fast.”

“News? I hain't heard nothin'.” Hoag held the butt of his whip against his lower lip and stared questioningly. “Say, what's up?”

“Enough, God knows—hell's to pay. We've got to git together right away an' take action o' some sort. Say—wait a minute.”

The negro who had been cleaning the buggy was drawing it through the stable toward them, and his master strode angrily to the rear door.

“Leave that buggy thar,” he ordered, “an' go back to the front an' stay till I come.”

With a blank look of astonishment the negro dropped the tongue of the buggy, and turned back to the front. Hoag heard Trawley softly grumbling as he came back.

“I'll break a board over that nigger's head one o' these days,” he growled. “He was try in' to get back here to see what me'n you are up to.”

“Oh, I reckon not—I reckon not,” Hoag said, his gaze anxiously fixed on Trawley's face. “Just now you said somethin' about news.”

“You'll think it's news when you hear it,” the stable-man said, taking off his hat and mopping his hot brow with a soiled handkerchief. “Cap, the last thing me or you could possibly expect has done happened. The sheriff of Canton County has just telegraphed that he's got the man that killed old Rose.”

“Got the man that—bosh! Why we—” The words fell from Hoag's lips like bits of metal, and he broke off with a low oath. For a moment neither he nor Trawley spoke. Hoag laughed defiantly, mechanically, and without mirth. Then his face glowed faintly. “Oh, I see, the sheriff over thar don't know what—what took place here last night. He's nabbed some triflin' nigger that had a suspicious look, an' is holdin' 'im for—”

“'Twasn't no nigger,” Trawley said. “It is a tramp—a white man that the sheriff says passed Rose's farm yesterday afoot.”

“Well, what o' that?” Hoag showed irritability. “We'll have to wire the sheriff to turn the man loose—that's all—that's all!”

“If that was all, it would be easy; but it ain't, by a long shot,” Trawley sniffed. “The tramp had Rose's old silver watch with his name cut on it!”

“You mean—” But Hoag knew well what he meant, and was in no mood for idle remarks. When thwarted in anything, justly or unjustly, he became angry; he felt his rage rising now over his sheer inability to cope with a situation which certainly demanded all his poise, all his mental forces.

“We are simply in a hole,” Trawley muttered, still wiping the sweat from his brow. “In a hole, an' a deep one at that.”

“What makes you think so?” Hoag was glaring into the eyes of his companion, as a man in dense darkness trying to see.

“Because we are,” Trawley answered. “The sheriff over thar in Canton won't want to admit he's made a mistake with the proof he holds. He'll bring his man to trial an' the fellow will be convicted. The fact that we—that us boys in this county strung up a nigger for the crime won't make any difference over thar, but it will make a lot here.”

“I don't see how.”

“Well, I do, if you don't, Cap. We are in, an' we are in deep. You have a curious way about you—you git so mad when things go ag'in' you that you won't admit facts when they are before you. As for me, I've been here thinkin' over it all momin'. It is nasty—the whole damn thing is nasty. The niggers are gittin' bold enough anyway, along with what the Atlanta papers have been sayin' in their favor, an' the Governor talkin' about orderin' troops out, an' the like, an' now this will simply stir up the State. We kin keep the main body of niggers down by what we done—what was done last night; but thar are some sly ones with white blood an' hell in 'em. We are all in danger. Look at this stable.” Trawley waved his damp handkerchief toward the big building and surrounding wagon-sheds. “One of the devils could sneak up here any night and set fire to all I got an' burn it to the ground. It is so dry it would go up like powder. I've got several thousand dollars' worth of vehicles, to say nothin' of live-stock that can't be driv' out at such a time, an' I don't carry insurance, because the rate is too high, owin' to the risk bein' so heavy; Land as for you—your tannery, house, cotton-gin, warehouse, an'—”

“Thar's no good talkin' about all that!” Hoag broke in, with a lowering frown. “We've got to do something, an' do it quick.”

“Wait a minute,” Trawley said. “I hear one o' them niggers whistlin' for me; it may be one o' our—one of—may be somebody lookin' for us now. Thar'll be excitement, big excitement, when it spreads about through the mountains.”

There was an oak in the yard which shaded the well, and Hoag went to the well and sat down on the end of a long dug-out watering-trough. He was beginning to perspire freely, and he took off his hat and fanned himself in a nervous, jerky fashion. His hands were damp, and on their red backs, and along his heavy wrists, the hairs stood like dank reeds in a miniature swamp. He was in high dudgeon; everything seemed to have turned against him. Tye's unconscious lecture and crude object-lessons, combined with the old man's spiritual placidity and saintly aloofness from the horrors he shrank from, were galling in the extreme. Then Trawley's fears that certain property might be destroyed by way of retaliation were worth considering; and, lastly, there was the humiliation of such a grave mistake becoming public, even though the perpetrators themselves might not be known. From where Hoag sat he could look into the stable, and he saw Trawley going from stall to stall showing the horses to a well-dressed stranger, who looked like a traveling salesman of the better class. Presently the man left the stable, and Trawley, still holding his stick and knife in hand, came back to Hoag.

“Damn fool from up North,” he explained, angrily. “Wanted to hire a rig an' hosses to go over the mountain, whar he's got some lumber interests. He talked to me like—I wish you'd a-heard 'im. I couldn't hardly pin 'im down to business, he was so full o' the hangin'. He happened to see 'em cut down the body an' haul it away. Of course, he had no idea that I—he seemed to lay it to a gang o' cutthroats from over whar he was to go, an' wondered if it would be safe for a Northern man to drive out unarmed an' without a bodyguard.”

“Why didn't you slap his jaw?” Hoag growled, inconsistently.

“Yes, an' had 'im ax what it was to me,” Trawley snarled. “I did, in a roundabout way, try to show up our side, an' what we have to contend with; but he just kept groanin', 'My Lord, my Lord,' an' sayin' that old woman an' her children was the pitifulest sight he ever saw! He said”—Trawley shrugged his shoulders and made a grimace as he tugged at his mustache—“he said all of us civilized citizens—them was his words—ought to band together an' 'force law an' order—that it was killin' our interests. He had been countin' on locatin' here, he said, but was afeard, when the thing got in the papers, his company would back out an' not develop their property. He seemed awfully put out. I tried to tell 'im that if he knowed niggers as we do he'd see it our way; but the truth is, I was so bothered over that dang tramp's arrest that—”

“I've been studyin' over that.” Hoag dismissed the stranger from his mind with a fierce frown. “There is only one thing to do. Set down here—set down!”

Sid complied. “If you can think of any way out o' the mess you can beat me,” he said, dejectedly.

“Thar is just one thing for us to do.” Hoag was to some extent regaining his self-possession, his old autocratic mien had returned. “You fellows are all goin' to git rattled an' somebody's got to keep a clear head an' plan how to act. The klan will naturally look to me; it is really on my shoulders; we'll sink or fall by my judgment. Some of us have got to git together to-night an' march over thar to the Canton jail an' take that tramp out.”

“An' lynch 'im? Good Lord, Cap—”

“No, fool, not lynch 'im—that wouldn't do—that never would do in the world; we must send 'im about his business—hustle 'im out o' the country an'—an' circulate the report that he was arrested by mistake, which—which I've no doubt he was. Pete Watson sold 'im the watch. That's plain enough.”

“Oh, ah, I see—by gum, I see; but what about the sheriff over thar? Fellers o' that sort are sometimes proud o' makin' an arrest in a case like that.”

“That's the only hill to climb an' we may fail; but we've got to try it. I know 'im purty well. He expects to be re-elected, an' half of our boys live in his county an' vote thar. We must show 'im the damage the thing would work among the niggers, an' sort o' make a—a political issue of it; show 'im that he'll git beat, an' beat bad, if he goes ag'in' so many.”

“By gum, you are a corker, Cap—you sure are.” Hoag's eyes gleamed, a look of pride settled on his face; he crossed his legs and tapped the spur on his heel with the butt of his whip till the little pronged wheel spun like a circular saw, “When I'm driv' clean to the wall like this I generally see a loophole,” he said. “Now, let's set to work; you send out the word in the usual way, an' have 'em meet at the Cove.”

“Good, good! It's worth tryin', anyway.” Trawley breathed more freely. “I'll notify most o' the boys—especially them that live in Canton County.”

“Order out as many as you can,” Hoag said. “At night it will be hard for the sheriff to know who they all are, an' the bigger the crowd the better; but, say—I've just thought of something important. You'll have to leave Sam an' Alec Rose out. You see it stands to reason that they'd never consent to let the tramp off, an'—an'—well, we can't kill 'im. He's got to go free.”

“Yes, Sam an' Alec will have to be left out—they are crazy enough as it is. I'll caution the other boys not to let 'em know a thing about it.”

“That's the idea.” Hoag was starting away, when Trawley, still seated on the trough, called him back.

“Wait; thar was something else I had on my mind to tell you, but it has clean slipped away. I intended to tell you last night, but we had so much to do, an' thar was so much excitement. Lemme see—oh yes, now I remember!” Trawley stood up and caught the lapel of Hoag's thin coat. “Say, Cap, I want to warn you, as a friend, you are goin' to have more trouble with Jeff Warren. He hain't never been satisfied since you an' him had that fight last spring. He says he licked you, an' that you've been denying it. He was here at the stable yesterday talkin' about what he was goin' to do with you when he meets you. He's heard some'n he claims you said about him an' Ralph Rundel's wife. I reckon he is actin' the fool about 'er, an' maybe he is takin' advantage of a sick man; but nobody knows, for sure. Some think Jeff is honorable. Anyway, you'll have to look out an' not let 'im git the drop on you. He's a bloodthirsty devil when he's mad, an' he hain't got sense enough to know that he'd compromise the woman worse by fightin' for her than lettin' the matter blow over.”

Hoag stood silent, facing his companion. His countenance became rigid and his heavy brows fell together; there was a peculiar twitching about his nostrils. “I don't know what I said about him an' her, an' I care less.” He spoke in halting, uncertain tones. “I've got no use for 'im, an' never had.”

“Well, I thought there'd be no harm in puttin' you on yore guard.” Trawley looked at his chief as if perplexed over his mood. “He's a hot-headed devil, that will shoot at the drop of a hat.”

Hoag stood rigid. There was a fixed stare in his eyes. His lips quivered, as if on the verge of utterance, and then he looked down at the ground. Trawley eyed him in slow surprise for a moment, then he said:

“I hope, Cap, you don't think I am meddlin' in yore private business. It is not often that I tote any sort o' tale betwixt two men; but Jeff is such a rampant daredevil, an' so crazy right now, that—”

“I'm not afraid of 'im. Good God, don't think that!” Hoag was quite pale. “It was only—say, Sid, it's like this: do you think that a man like me, with all I've got at stake, one way or another, can afford to—to take even chances with a shiftless fool like Jeff Warren?”

“It ain't what you, or me, or anybody can afford to do,” the stable-owner returned, “or want to do, for that matter; when a chap like Jeff is loaded for bear an' on our trail we've either got to git ready for 'im or—or swear out a peace-warrant, an' me or you'd rather be hung than do the like o' that. As for me, in all rows I treat everybody alike. If a black buck nigger wants satisfaction out o' me he can git it—you bet he can.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Hoag said, his eyes shifting restlessly in their deep sockets, his fingers fumbling his whip. “I was just wondering; did he—did you notice whether Warren was totin' a gun or not?”

“I think he was; that's why I mentioned the matter to you. In fact, he was inquiring if anybody had seen you—said he knowed enough law to know that if he went to yore house on such serious business that he'd be held accountable, wharas, if you an' him met on a public highway it would be all right, beca'se it was your unjustified remark ag'in' a woman that started the thing.”

Hoag stared into the face of his companion for another minute. It was as if he wanted some sort of advice and did not know how to ask for it. He shrugged his shoulders, lashed the hot air with his whip, cleared his throat, and said:

“I hope you don't think I'm afraid o' the dirty puppy, Sid?”

“Afraid, oh no!” Trawley replied, indifferently. “Of course not. You kin shoot as straight as he can. Besides, if it come to the worst—if he did happen to git the best of it—you are in as good a shape to die as any man I know. You'd leave your wife an' family well provided for. Take my advice and don't give 'im a chance to draw a gun. Pull down, and pull down quick!”

Trawley led the way back into the stable, and at the front the two men parted. Hoag was on the sidewalk when Trawley called to him, and came to his side.

“If you hain't got a gun on you, you kin take mine,” he said, in a low tone.

“I've got one,” Hoag answered, a far-off look in his eyes, and he slid a hand over his bulging hip-pocket. “I never go without it.”

“Well, if nothin' happens, then I'll meet you tonight,” Trawley reminded him. “We must put that thing through.”

Hoag nodded. “All right,” he returned, abstractedly. “All right—all right.”

“If nothin' happens!” The words fairly stung his consciousness as he walked away. “If nothin' happens!” His feet and legs felt heavy. There was a cold, tremulous sensation in the region of his pounding heart.