CHAPTER VIII
WILL HE TELL?
Constable Bill Frost was not a man of such acute suspicion as SolGreening. He was a thin, slow man with a high, sharp nose and asprangling, yellow mustache which extended broadly, like the horns of asteer. It did not enter his mind to connect Joe with the tragedy in acriminal way as they rode together back to the farm.
When they arrived, they found Sol Greening and his married son Dansitting on the front steps. Mrs. Greening was upstairs, comforting theyoung widow, who was "racked like a fiddle," according to Sol.
Sol took the constable around to the window and pointed out the body ofIsom stretched beside the table.
"You're a officer of the law," said Sol, "and these here primisis is nowin your hands and charge, but I don't think you orto go in that room. Ithink you orto leave him lay, just the way he dropped, for the coroner.That's the law."
Frost was of the same opinion. He had no stomach for prying around deadmen, anyhow.
"We'll leave him lay, Sol," said he.
"And it's my opinion that you orto put handcuffs on that feller," saidSol.
"Which feller?" asked Bill.
"That boy Joe," said Sol.
"Well, I ain't got any, and I wouldn't put 'em on him if I had," saidBill. "He told me all about how it happened when we was comin' over.Why, you don't suspiciont he done it, do you, Sol?"
"Circumstantial evidence," said Sol, fresh from jury service and full ofthe law, "is dead ag'in' him, Bill. If I was you I'd slap him underarrest. They had words, you know."
"Yes; he told me they did," said Bill.
"But he didn't tell you what them words was about," said Sol deeply.
The constable turned to Sol, the shaft of suspicion working its waythrough the small door of his mind.
"By ganny!" said he.
"I'd take him up and hand him over to the sheriff in the morning,"advised Sol.
"I reckon I better do it," Frost agreed, almost knocked breathless bythe importance of the thing he had overlooked.
So they laid their heads together to come to a proper method ofprocedure, and presently they marched around the corner of the house,shoulder to shoulder, as if prepared to intercept and overwhelm Joe ifhe tried to make a dash for liberty.
They had left Joe sitting on the steps with Dan, and now they hurriedaround as if they expected to find his place empty and Dan stretchedout, mangled and bleeding. But Joe was still there, in friendlyconversation with Dan, showing no intention of running away. Frostadvanced and laid his hand on Joe's shoulder.
"Joe Newbolt," said he, "I put you under arrest on the suspiciont ofshootin' and murderin' Isom Chase in cold blood."
It was a formula contrived between the constable and Sol. Sol hadinsisted on the "cold blood." That was important and necessary, hedeclared. Omit that in making the arrest, and you had no case. It wouldfall through.
Joe stood up, placing himself at the immediate disposal of theconstable, which was rather embarrassing to Bill.
"Well, Bill, if you think it's necessary, all right," said he.
"Form of law demands it," said Sol.
"But you might wait and see what the coroner thinks about it," suggestedJoe.
"Perliminaries," said Greening in his deep way.
Then the question of what to do with the prisoner until morning arose.Joe pointed out that they could make no disposition of him, except tohold him in custody, until the coroner had held an inquest into the caseand a conclusion had been reached by the jury. He suggested that theyallow him to go to bed and get some needed sleep.
That seemed to be a very sensible suggestion, according to Bill's viewof it. But Sol didn't know whether it would be a regular proceeding andin strict accord with the forms of law. Indeed, he was of the opinion,after deliberating a while, that it would weaken the case materially. Hewas strongly in favor of handcuffs, or, in the absence of regulationmanacles, a half-inch rope.
After a great deal of discussion, during which Frost kept his handofficiously on Joe's shoulder, it was agreed that the prisoner should beallowed to go to bed. He was to be lodged in the spare room upstairs,the one lately occupied by Morgan. Frost escorted him to it, and lockedthe door.
"Is they erry winder in that room?" asked Sol, when Bill came back.
"Reckon so," said Frost, starting nervously. "I didn't look."
"Better see," said Sol, getting up to investigate.
They went round to the side of the house. Yes, there was a window, andit was wide open.
But any doubt that the prisoner might have escaped through it was soonquieted by the sound of his snore. Joe had thrown himself across thebed, boots and all, and was already shoulder-deep in sleep. They decidedthat, at daylight, Sol's son should ride to the county-seat, seven milesdistant, and notify the coroner.
During the time they spent between Joe's retirement and daybreak, Solimproved the minutes by arraigning, convicting, and condemning Joe forthe murder of old Isom. He did it so impressively that he had ConstableFrost on edge over the tremendous responsibility that rested on hisback. Bill was in a sweat, although the night was cool. He tiptoedaround, listening, spying, prying; he stood looking up at Joe's windowuntil his neck ached; he explored the yard for hidden weapons andtreasure, and he peered and poked with a rake-handle into shrubbery andvines.
They could hear the women upstairs talking once in a while, and now andagain they caught the sound of a piteous moan.
"She ain't seen him," said Sol; "I wouldn't let her come down. She maynot be in no condition to look on a muss like that, her a young womanand only married a little while."
Bill agreed on that, as he agreed on every hypothesis which Solpropounded out of his wisdom, now that his official heat had beenraised.
"If I hadn't got here when I did he'd 'a' skinned out with all of thatmoney," said Sol. "He was standin' there with his hat in his hand, allready to scoop it up."
"How'd he come to go after me?" asked Bill.
"Well, folks don't always do things on their own accord," said Sol,giving Bill an unmistakable look.
"Oh, that was the way of it," nodded Bill. "I thought it was funny ifhe----"
"He knowed he didn't have a ghost of a chance to git away between me andyou," said Sol.
Morning came, and with it rode Sol's son to fetch the coroner.
Sol had established himself in the case so that he would lose verylittle glory in the day's revelations, and there remained one pleasantduty yet which he proposed to take upon himself. That was nothing lessthan carrying the news of the tragedy and Joe's arrest to Mrs. Newboltin her lonely home at the foot of the hill.
Sol's son spread the news as he rode through the thin morning to thecounty-seat, drawing up at barn-yard gates, hailing the neighbors on theway to their fields, pouring the amazing story into the avid ears of allwho met him. Sol carried the story in the opposite direction, trottinghis horse along full of leisurely importance and the enjoyment of thedistinction which had fallen on him through his early connection withthe strange event. When they heard it, men turned back from their fieldsand hastened to the Chase farm, to peer through the kitchen window andshock their toil-blunted senses in the horror of the scene.
Curiosity is stronger than thrift in most men, and those of thatcommunity were no better fortified against it than others of their kind.Long before Sol Greening's great lubberly son reached the county-seat, acrowd had gathered at the farmstead of Isom Chase. Bill Frost, nowbristling with the dignity of his official power, moved among themsoberly, the object of great respect as the living, moving embodiment ofthe law.
Yesterday he was only Bill Frost, a tenant of rented land, filling anoffice that was only a name; this morning he was Constable Bill Frost,with the power and dignity of the State of Missouri behind him, guardinga house of mystery and death. Law and authority had transformed himovernight, settling upon him as the spirit used to come upon theprophets in the good old days.
Bill had only to stretch out his arm, and strong me
n would fall back,pale and awed, away from the wall of the house; he had but to cautionthem in a low word to keep hands off everything, to be instantly obeyed.They drew away into the yard and stood in low-voiced groups, the processof thought momentarily stunned by this terrible thing.
"Ain't it awful?" a graybeard would whisper to a stripling youth.
"Ain't it terrible?" would come the reply.
"Well, well, well! Old Isom!"
That was as far as any of them could go. Then they would walk softly,scarcely breathing, to the window and peep in again.
Joe, unhailed and undisturbed, was spinning out his sleep. Mrs. Greeningbrought coffee and refreshments for the young widow from her own kitchenacross the road, and the sun rose and drove the mists out of thehollows, as a shepherd drives his flocks out to graze upon the hill.
As Sol Greening hitched his horse to the Widow Newbolt's fence, he heardher singing with long-drawn quavers and lingering semibreves:
_There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins...._
She appeared at the kitchen door, a pan in her hand, a flock ofexpectant chickens craning their necks to see what she had to offer, atthe instant that Sol came around the corner of the house. She all butlet the pan fall in her amazement, and the song was cut off between herlips in the middle of a word, for it was not more than six o'clock,uncommonly early for visitors.
"Mercy me, Sol Greening, you give me an awful jump!" said she.
"Well, I didn't aim to," said Sol, turning over in his mind the speechthat he had drawn up in the last uninterrupted stage of his journeyover.
Mrs. Newbolt looked at him sharply, turning her head a little with aquick, pert movement, not unlike one of her hens.
"Is anybody sick over your way?" she asked.
She could not account for the early visit in any other manner. Peoplecommonly came for her at all hours of the day and night when there wassomebody sick and in need of a herb-wise nurse. She had helped a greatmany of the young ones of that community into the world, and she hadeased the pains of many old ones who were quitting it. So she thoughtthat Greening's visit must have something to do with either life ordeath.
"No, nobody just azackly sick," dodged Greening.
"Well, laws my soul, you make a mighty mystery over it! What's thematter--can't you talk?"
"But I can't say, Missis Newbolt, that everybody's just azackly well,"said he.
"Some of your folks?"
"No, not none of mine," said Sol.
"Then whose?" she inquired impatiently.
"Isom's," said he.
"You don't mean my Joe?" she asked slowly, a shadow of pain drawing herface.
"I mean Isom," said Sol.
"Isom?" said she, relieved. "Why didn't Joe come after me?" Before Solcould adjust his program to meet this unexpected exigency, she demanded:"Well, what's the matter with Isom?"
"Dead," said Sol, dropping his voice impressively.
"You don't mean--well, shades of mercy, Isom dead! What wasit--cholera-morbus?"
"Killed," said Sol; "shot down with his own gun and killed as dead as adornix."
"His own gun! Well, sakes--who done it?"
"Only one man knows," said Sol, shaking his head solemnly. "I'll tellyou how it was."
Sol started away back at the summons to jury service, worked up to thecase in which he and Isom had sat together, followed Isom then along theroad home, and galloped to overtake him. He arrived at his gate--all inhis long and complete narrative--again, as he had done in reality thenight past; he heard the shot in Isom's house; he leaped to the ground;he ran. He saw a light in the kitchen of Isom's house, but the door wasclosed; he knocked, and somebody called to him to enter. He opened thedoor and saw Isom lying there, still and bloody, money--gold money--allover him, and a man standing there beside him. There was nobody else inthe room.
"Shades of mercy!" she gasped. "Who was that man?"
Sol looked at her pityingly. He put his hand to his forehead as if itgave him pain to speak.
"It was your Joe," said he.
She sighed, greatly lightened and relieved.
"Oh, then Joe he told you how it happened?" said she.
"Ma'am," said Sol impressively, "he said they was alone in the kitchenwhen it happened; he said him and Isom had some words, and Isom hereached up to pull down the gun, and the hammer caught, and it went offand shot him. That's what Joe told me, ma'am."
"Well, Sol Greening, you talk like you didn't believe him!" she scorned."If Joe said that, it's so."
"I hope to God it is!" said Sol, drawing a great breath.
If Sol had looked for tears, his eyes were cheated; if he had listenedfor screams, wailings, and moanings, his ears were disappointed. SarahNewbolt stood straight and haughtily scornful in her kitchen door, herdark eyes bright between their snapping lids.
"Where's Joe?" she asked sternly.
"He's over there," said Sol, feeling that he had made a noise like apeanut-bag which one inflates and smashes in the palm in the expectationof startling the world.
"Have they took him up?"
"Well, you see, Bill Frost's kind of keepin' his eye on him till theinquest," explained Sol.
"Yes, and I could name the man that put him up to it," said she.
"Well, circumstantial evidence--" began Sol.
"Oh, circumstance your granny!" she stopped him pettishly.
Mrs. Newbolt emptied her pan among the scrambling fowls by turning itsuddenly upside down. That done, she reached behind her and put it onthe table. Her face had grown hard and severe, and her eyes werefierce.
"Wouldn't believe my boy!" said she bitterly. "Are you going over thatway now?"
"Guess I'll be ridin' along over."
"Well, you tell Joe that I'll be there as quick as shank's horses cancarry me," she said, turning away from the door, leaving Sol to gatherwhat pleasure he was able out of the situation.
She lost no time in primping and preparing, but was on the road beforeSol had gone a quarter of a mile.
Mrs. Newbolt cut across fields, arriving at the Chase farm almost assoon as Sol Greening did on his strawberry roan. The coroner had notcome when she got there; Bill Frost allowed Joe to come down to theunused parlor of old Isom's house to talk with her. Frost showed adisposition to linger within the room and hear what was said, but shepushed him out.
"I'll not let him run off, Bill Frost," said she. "If he'd wanted torun, if he'd had anything to run from, he could 'a' gone last night,couldn't he, you dunce?"
She closed the door, and no word of what passed between mother and sonreached the outside of it, although Bill Frost strained his ear againstit, listening.
When the coroner arrived in the middle of the forenoon he found nodifficulty in obtaining a jury to inquire into Isom's death. The majorand minor male inhabitants of the entire neighborhood were assembledthere, every qualified man of them itching to sit on the jury. As thecoroner had need of but six, and these being soon chosen, the others hadno further pleasure to look forward to save the inquiry into thetragedy.
After examining the wound which caused Isom's death, the coroner hadordered the body removed from the kitchen floor. The lamp was stillburning on the table, and the coroner blew it out; the gold layscattered on the floor where it had fallen, and he gathered it up andput it in the little sack.
When the coroner went to the parlor to convene the inquest, the crowdpacked after him. Those who were not able to get into the room clusteredin a bunch at the door, and protruded themselves in at the windows,silent and expectant.
Joe sat with his mother on one hand, Constable Frost on the other, andacross the room was Ollie, wedged between fat Mrs. Sol Greening and herbony daughter-in-law, who claimed the office of ministrants on theground of priority above all the gasping, sympathetic, and exclaimingfemales who had arrived after them.
Ollie was pale and exhausted in appearance, her face drawn andbloodless, like that of one who wakes out of an anesthetic after asurgical oper
ation upon some vital part. Her eyes were hollowed, hernostrils pinched, but there was no trace of tears upon her cheeks. Theneighbors said it was dry grief, the deepest and most lasting that racksthe human heart. They pitied her, so young and fair, so crushed andbowed under that sudden, dark sorrow.
Mrs. Greening had thrown something black over the young widow'sshoulders, of which she seemed unaware. It kept slipping and fallingdown, revealing her white dress, and Mrs. Greening kept adjusting itwith motherly hand. Sitting bent, like an old woman, Ollie twisted andwound her nervous hot fingers in her lap. Now and then she lifted hereyes to Joe's, as if struggling to read what intention lay behind thepale calm of his face.
No wonder she looked at him wild and fearful, people said. It was morethan anybody could understand, that sudden development of fierce passionand treachery in a boy who always had been so shy and steady. No wondershe gazed at him that way, poor thing!
Of course they did not dream how far they were from interpreting thatlook in the young widow's eyes. There was one question in her life thatmorning, and one only, it seemed. It stood in front of the future andblocked all thought of it like a heavy door. Over and over it revolvedin her mind. It was written in fire in her aching brain.
When they put Joe Newbolt on the witness-stand and asked him how ithappened, would he stand true to his first intention and protect her, orwould he betray it all?
That was what troubled Ollie. She did not know, and in his face therewas no answer.
Sol Greening was the first witness. He told again to the jury of hisneighbors the story which he had gone over a score of times thatmorning. Mrs. Newbolt nodded when he related what Joe had told him, asif to say there was no doubt about that; Joe had told her the samething. It was true.
The coroner, a quick, sharp little man with a beard of unnaturalblackness, thick eyebrows and sleek hair, helped him along with aquestion now and then.
"There was nobody in the room but Joe Newbolt when you arrived?"
"Nobody else--no livin' body," replied Sol.
"No other living body. And Joe Newbolt was standing beside the body ofIsom Chase, near the head, you say?"
"Yes, near Isom's head."
"With his hat in his hand, as if he had just entered the room, or wasabout to leave it?"
Sol nodded.
"Do you know anything about a man who had been boarding here the pastweek or two?"
The coroner seemed to ask this as an afterthought.
"Morgan," said Sol, crossing his legs the other way for relief. "Yes, Iknowed him."
"Did you see him here last night?"
"No, he wasn't here. The old lady said he stopped in at our houseyesterday morning to sell me a ready-reckoner."
Sol chuckled, perhaps over what he considered a narrow escape.
"I was over at Shelbyville, on the jury, and I wasn't there, so hedidn't sell it. Been tryin' to for a week. He told the old lady that washis last day here, and he was leavin' then."
"And about what time of night was it when you heard the shot in IsomChase's house, and ran over?"
"Along about first rooster-crow," said Sol.
"And that might be about what hour?"
"Well, I've knowed 'em to crow at 'leven this time o' year, and ag'inI've knowed 'em to put it off as late as two. But I should judge that itwas about twelve when I come over here the first time last night."
Sol was excused with that. He left the witness-chair with ponderoussolemnity. The coroner's stenographer had taken down his testimony, andwas now leaning back in his chair as serenely as if unconscious of hisown marvelous accomplishment of being able to write down a man's wordsas fast as he could talk.
Not so to those who beheld the feat for the first time. They watched theyoung man, who was a ripe-cheeked chap with pale hair, as if theyexpected to catch him in the fraud and pretense of it in the end, andlay bare the deceit which he practised upon the world.
The coroner was making notes of his own, stroking his black beardthoughtfully, and in the pause between witnesses the assembled neighborshad the pleasure of inspecting the parlor of dead Isom Chase which theyhad invaded, into which, living, he never had invited them.
Isom's first wife had arranged that room, in the hope of her youngheart, years and years ago. Its walls were papered in bridal gaiety, itscolors still bright, for the full light of day seldom fell into it asnow. There hung a picture of that bride's father, a man with shaved lipand a forest of beard from ears to Adam's apple, in a little oval frame;and there, across the room, was another, of her mother, Quakerish inlook, with smooth hair and a white something on her neck and bosom, heldat her throat by a portrait brooch. On the table, just under thatfast-writing young man's eyes, was a glass thing shaped like a cakecover, protecting some flowers made of human hair, and sprigs ofbachelor's button, faded now, and losing their petals.
There hung the marriage certificate of Isom and his first wife, framedin tarnished gilt which was flaking from the wood, a blue ribbon througha slit in one corner of the document, like the pendant of a seal, andthere stood the horsehair-upholstered chairs, so spare of back and thinof shank that the rustics would stand rather than trust their corn-fedweight upon them. Underfoot was a store-bought carpet, as full of rosesas the Elysian Fields, and over by the door lay a round, braided ragmat, into which Isom's old wife had stitched the hunger of her heart andthe brine of her lonely tears.
The coroner looked up from his little red-leather note-book.
"Joe Newbolt, step over here and be sworn," said he.
Joe crossed over to the witness-chair, picking his way through feet andlegs. As he turned, facing the coroner, his hand upraised, Ollie lookedat him steadily, her fingers fluttering and twining.
Twelve hours had made a woeful change in her. She was as gaunt as asuckling she-hound, an old terror lay lurking in her young eyes. For onehour of dread is worse than a year of weeping. One may grieve, honestlyand deeply, without wearing away the cheeks or burning out the heart,for there is a soft sorrow which lies upon the soul like a deadeningmist upon the autumn fields. But there is no worry without waste. Oneday of it will burn more of the fuel of human life than a decade ofplacid sorrow.
How much would he tell? Would it be all--the story of the caress in thekitchen door, the orchard's secret, the attempt to run away fromIsom--or would he shield her in some manner? If he should tell all,there sat an audience ready to snatch the tale and carry it away, andspread it abroad. Then disgrace would follow, pitiless and driving, andMorgan was not there to bear her away from it, or to mitigate itssting.
Bill Frost edged over and stood behind the witness chair. His act gavethe audience a thrill. "He's under arrest!" they whispered, sending itfrom ear to ear. Most of them had known it before, but there wassomething so full and satisfying in the words. Not once before in yearshad there been occasion to use them; it might be years again beforeanother opportunity presented. They had an official sound, a sound ofadventure and desperation. And so they whispered them, neighbor noddingto neighbor in deep understanding as it went round the room, like apass-word in secret conclave: "He's under arrest!"
There was nobody present to advise Joe of his rights. He had beenaccused of the crime and taken into custody, yet they were calling onhim now to give evidence which might be used against him. If he had anydoubt about the legality of the proceeding, he was too certain of theoutcome of the inquiry to hesitate or demur. There was not a shadow ofdoubt in his mind that his neighbors, men who had known him all hislife, and his father before him, would acquit him of all blame in thematter and set him free. They would believe him, assuredly. Therefore,he answered cheerfully when the coroner put the usual questionsconcerning age and nativity. Then the coroner leaned back in his chair.
"Now, Joe, tell the jury just how it happened," said he.
The jury looked up with a little start of guilt at the coroner'sreference to itself, presenting a great deal of whiskers and shocks ofuntrimmed hair, together with some reddening of the face. For the
juryhad been following the movements of the coroner's stenographer, as ifit, also, expected to catch him in the trick of it that wouldincriminate him and send him to the penitentiary for life.
"I'd been down to the barn and out by the gate, looking around," saidJoe. There he paused.
"Yes; looking around," encouraged the coroner, believing from the lad'sappearance and slow manner that he had a dull fellow in hand. "Now, whatwere you looking around for, Joe?"
"I had a kind of uneasy feeling, and I wanted to see if everything wassafe," said Joe.
"Afraid of horse-thieves, or something like that?"
"Something like that," nodded Joe.
Mrs. Newbolt, sitting very straight-backed, held her lips tight, for shewas impressed with the seriousness of the occasion. Now and then shenodded, as if confirming to herself some foregone conclusion.
"Isom had left me in charge of the place, and I didn't want him to comeback and find anything gone," Joe explained.
"I see," said the coroner in a friendly way. "Then what did you do?"
"I went back to the house and lit the lamp in the kitchen," said Joe.
"How long was that before Isom came in?"
"Only a little while; ten or fifteen minutes, or maybe less."
"And what did Isom say when he came in, Joe?"
"He said he'd kill me, he was in a temper," Joe replied.
"You had no quarrel before he said that, Isom just burst right into theroom and threatened to kill you, did he, Joe? Now, you're sure aboutthat?"
"Yes, I'm perfectly sure."
"What had you done to send Isom off into a temper that way?"
"I hadn't done a thing," said Joe, meeting the coroner's gaze honestly.
The coroner asked him concerning his position in the room, what he wasdoing, and whether he had anything in his hands that excited Isom whenhe saw it.
"My hands were as empty as they are this minute," said Joe, but notwithout a little color in his cheeks when he remembered how hot andsmall Ollie's hand had felt within his own.
"When did you first see this?" asked the coroner, holding up the sackwith the burst corner which had lain on Isom's breast.
The ruptured corner had been tied with a string, and the sack bulgedheavily in the coroner's hand.
"When Isom was lying on the floor after he was shot," said Joe.
A movement of feet was audible through the room. People looked at eachother, incredulity in their eyes. The coroner returned to the incidentswhich led up to the shooting snapping back to that phase of the inquirysuddenly, as if in the expectation of catching Joe off his guard.
"What did he threaten to kill you for?" he asked sharply.
"Well, Isom was an unreasonable and quick-tempered man," Joe replied.
The coroner rose to his feet in a quick start, as if he intended to leapover the table. He pointed his finger at Joe, shaking his somber beard.
"What did Isom Chase catch you at when he came into that kitchen?" heasked accusingly.
"He saw me standing there, just about to blow out the light and go tobed," said Joe.
"What did you and Isom quarrel about last night?"
Joe did not reply at once. He seemed debating with himself over theadvisability of answering at all. Then he raised his slow eyes to thecoroner's face.
"That was between him and me," said he.
"Very well," said the coroner shortly, resuming his seat. "You may tellthe jury how Isom Chase was shot."
Joe described Isom's leap for the gun, the struggle he had with him torestrain him, the catching of the lock in the fork as Isom tugged at thebarrel, the shot, and Isom's death.
When he finished, the coroner bent over his note-book again, as iflittle interested and less impressed. Silence fell over the room. Thenthe coroner spoke, his head still bent over the book, not even turninghis face toward the witness, his voice soft and low.
"You were alone with Isom in the kitchen when this happened?"
A flash of heat ran over Ollie's body. After it came a sweeping wave ofcold. The room whirled; the world stood on edge. Her hour had struck;the last moment of her troubled security was speeding away. What wouldJoe answer to that?
"Yes," said Joe calmly, "we were alone."
Ollie breathed again; her heart's constriction relaxed.
The coroner wheeled on Joe.
"Where was Mrs. Chase?" he asked.
A little murmur, as of people drawing together with whispers; a littlesoft scuffing of cautiously shifted feet on the carpet, followed thequestion. Ollie shrank back, as if wincing from pain.
"Mrs. Chase was upstairs in her room," answered Joe.
The weight of a thousand centuries lifted from Ollie's body. Her visioncleared. Her breath came back in measured flow to her lips, moist andrefreshing.
He had not told. He was standing between her and the sharp tongues ofthose waiting people, already licking hungrily in their awakenedsuspicion, ready to sear her fair name like flames. But there was nogratitude in her heart that moment, no quick lifting of thankfulness norunderstanding of the great peril which Joe had assumed for her. Therewas only relief, blessed, easing, cool relief. He had not told.
But the coroner was a persistent man. He was making more than aninvestigation out of it; he was fairly turning it into a trial, with Joeas the defendant. The people were ready to see that, and appreciate hisattempts to uncover the dark motive that lay behind this deed, of whichthey were convinced, almost to a man, that Joe was guilty.
"Was Isom jealous of you?" asked the coroner, beginning the assault onJoe's reserve suddenly again when it seemed that he was through. For thefirst time during the inquiry Joe's voice was unsteady when he replied.
"He had no cause to be, and you've got no right to ask me that, either,sir!" he said.
"Shame on you, shame on you!" said Mrs. Newbolt, leaning toward thecoroner, shaking her head reprovingly.
"I've got the right to ask you anything that I see fit and proper, youngman," the coroner rebuked him sternly.
"Well, maybe you have," granted Joe, drawing himself straight in thechair.
"Did Isom Chase ever find you alone with his wife?" the coroner asked.
"Now you look here, sir, if you'll ask me questions that a gentlemanought to ask, I'll answer you like a gentleman, but I'll never answersuch questions as that!"
There was a certain polite deference in Joe's voice, which he felt thathe owed, perhaps, to the office that the man represented, but there wasa firmness above it all that was unmistakable.
"You refuse to answer any more questions, then?" said the coronerslowly, and with a significance that was almost sinister.
"I'll answer any proper questions you care to ask me," answered Joe.
"Very well, then. You say that you and Isom quarreled last night?"
"Yes, sir; we had a little spat."
"A little spat," repeated the coroner, looking around the room as if toask the people on whose votes he depended for reelection what _they_thought of a "little spat" which ended in a man's death. There was asort of broad humor about it which appealed to the blunt rural sense. Agrin ran over their faces like a spreading wavelet on a pool. "Well now,what was the beginning of that 'little spat'?"
"Oh, what's that got to do with it?" asked Joe impatiently. "You askedme that before."
"And I'm asking you again. What was that quarrel over?"
"None of your business!" said Joe hotly, caring nothing for consequences.
"Then you refuse to answer, and persist in your refusal?"
"Well, we don't seem to get on very well," said Joe.
"No, we don't," the coroner agreed snappishly. "Stand down; that will beall."
The listening people shifted and relaxed, leaned and whispered, turningquick eyes upon Joe, studying him with furtive wonder, as if they haddiscovered in him some fearful and hideous thing, which he, moving amongthem all his life, had kept concealed until that day.
Ollie followed him in the witness-chair. She relate
d her story, framedon the cue that she had taken from Greening's testimony and Joe'ssubstantiation of it, in low, trembling voice, and with eyes downcast.She knew nothing about the tragedy until Sol called up to her, she said,and then she was in ignorance of what had happened. Mrs. Greening hadtold her when she came that Isom was killed.
Ollie was asked about the book-agent boarder, as Greening had beenasked. Morgan had left on the morning of the fateful day, she said,having finished his work in that part of the country. She and Joe werealone in the house that night.
The coroner spared her, no matter how far his sharp suspicions flashedinto the obscurity of the relations between herself and the youngbondman. The people, especially the women, approved his leniency withnods. Her testimony concluded the inquiry, and the coroner addressed thejury.
"Gentlemen," he said, "you will take into consideration the evidence youhave heard, and determine, if possible, the manner in which Isom Chasecame to his death, and fix the responsibility for the same. It is withinyour power to recommend that any person believed by you to be directlyor indirectly responsible for his death, be held to the grand jury forfurther investigation. Gentlemen, you will now view the body."
Alive, Isom Chase had walked in the secret derision and contempt of hisneighbors, despised for his parsimony, ridiculed for his manner of life.Dead, he had become an object of awe which they approached softly andwith fear.
Isom lay upon his own cellar door, taken down from its hinges to makehim a couch. It stood over against the kitchen wall, a chair supportingit at either end, and Isom stretched upon it covered over with a sheet.The coroner drew back the covering, revealing the face of the dead, andthe jurymen, hats in hand, looked over each other's shoulders and thenbacked away.
For Isom was no handsomer as a corpse than he had been as a living,striving man. The hard, worn iron of his frame was there, like an oldplowshare, useless now, no matter what furrows it had turned in its day.The harsh speech was gone out of his crabbed lips, but the scowl whichdelinquent debtors feared stood frozen upon his brow. He had died withgold above his heart, as he had lived with the thought of that brightmetal crowding every human sentiment out of it, and the mystery of thoseglittering pieces under his dead hand was unexplained.
Somebody, it appeared, had sinned against old Isom Chase at the end, andJoe Newbolt knew who that person was. Here he had stood before them alland lifted up a wall of stubborn silence to shield the guilty head, andthere was no doubt that it was his own.
That also was the opinion of the coroner's jury, which walked out fromits deliberations in the kitchen in a little while and gave as itsverdict that Isom Chase had come to his death by a gunshot wound,inflicted at the hands of Joseph Newbolt. The jury recommended that theaccused be held to the grand jury, for indictment or dismissal.
Mrs. Newbolt did not understand fully what was going forward, but shegathered that the verdict of the neighbors was unfriendly to Joe. Shesat looking from the coroner to Joe, from Joe to the jurors, lined upwith backs against the wall, as solemn and nervous as if waiting for afiring squad to appear and take aim at their patriotic breasts. Shestood up in her bewilderment, and looked with puzzled, dazed expressionaround the room.
"Joe didn't do it, if that's what you mean," said she.
"Madam--" began the coroner severely.
"Yes, you little whiffet," she burst out sharply, "you're the one thatput 'em up to do it! Joe didn't do it, I tell you, and you men know thatas well as I do. Every one of you has knowed him all his life!"
"Madam, I must ask you not to interrupt the proceedings," said thecoroner.
"Order in the court!" commanded the constable in his deepest officialvoice.
"Oh, shut your fool mouth, Bill Frost!" said Mrs. Newbolt scornfully.
"Never mind, Mother," counseled Joe. "I'll be all right. They have to dowhat they're doing, I suppose."
"Yes, they're doin' what that little snip-snapper with them coloredwhiskers tells 'em to do!" said she.
Solemn as the occasion was, a grin went round at the bald reference to aplainer fact. Even the dullest there had seen the grayish-red at theroots of the coroner's beard. The coroner grew very red of face, andgave some orders to his stenographer, who wrote them down. He thankedthe jurors and dismissed them. Bill Frost began to prepare for thejourney to Shelbyville to turn Joe over to the sheriff.
The first, and most important, thing in the list of preliminaries forthe journey, was the proper adjustment of Bill's mustache. Bill roachedit up with a turn of the forefinger, using the back of it, which wasrough, like a corn-cob. When he had got the ends elevated at a valiantangle, his hat firmly settled upon his head, and his suspenderstightened two inches, he touched Joe's shoulder.
"Come on!" he ordered as gruffly and formally as he could draw his edgedvoice.
Joe stood, and Bill put his hand on his arm to pilot him, in allofficiousness, out of the room. Mrs. Newbolt stepped in front of them asthey approached.
"Joe!" she cried appealingly.
"That's all right, Mother," he comforted her, "everything will becleared up and settled in a day or two. You go on home now, Mother, andlook after things till I come."
"Step out of the way, step out of the way!" said Bill with spreadingimpatience.
Mrs. Newbolt looked at the blustering official pityingly.
"Bill Frost, you ain't got as much sense as you was born with!" saidshe. She patted Joe's shoulder, which was as near an approach totenderness as he ever remembered her to make.
Constable Frost fell into consultation with his adjutant, Sol Greening,as soon as he cleared the room with the prisoner. They discussed gravelyin the prisoner's hearing, for Bill kept his hand on Joe's arm all thetime, the advisability of tying him securely with a rope before startingon the journey to jail.
Joe grew indignant over this base proposal. He declared that if Bill wasafraid of him he would go alone to the county-seat and give himself upto the sheriff if they would set him free. Bill was a little assured byhis prisoner's evident sincerity.
Another consultation brought them to the agreement that the best theycould do, in the absence of handcuffs, was to hitch up to Isom's buggyand make the prisoner drive. With hands employed on the lines, he couldbe watched narrowly by Bill who was to take Sol's old navy six along inhis mighty hand.
Mrs. Newbolt viewed the officious constable's preparations for thejourney with many expressions of anger and disdain.
"Just look at that old fool, Bill Frost, with that revolver!" said she,turning to the neighbors, who stood silently watching. "Just as if Joewould hurt anybody, or try to run away!"
Sympathy seemed to be lacking in the crowd. Everybody was against Joe,that was attested by the glum faces and silence which met her on everyhand. She was amazed at their stupidity. There they stood, people whohad seen Joe grow up, people who knew that a Newbolt would give his lastcent and go hungry to meet an obligation; that he would wear rags to payhis debts, as Peter had done, as Joe was doing after him; that he wouldwork and strive night and day to keep fair his honorable name, and topreserve the honest record of the family clear and clean.
They all knew that, and they knew that a Newbolt never lied, but theyhunched their backs and turned away their heads as if they thought abody was going to hit them when she spoke. It disgusted her; she feltlike she could turn loose on some of them with their own records, whichshe had from a generation back.
She approached the buggy as Joe took up the lines and prepared to driveout of the gate.
"I don't see why they think you done it, son, it's so unreasonable andunneighborly of them," said she.
"Neighborly!" said Joe, with sudden bitterness in his young voice. "Whatam I to them but 'the pore folks' boy'? They didn't believe me, Mother,but when I get a chance to stand up before Judge Maxwell over atShelbyville, I'll be talking to a gentleman. A gentleman willunderstand."
That sounded like his father, she thought. It moved her with a feelingof the pride which she had reflected feebly for so
many years.
"I hope so, son," said she. "If you're not back in a day or two, I'll beover to Shelbyville."
"Drive on, drive on!" ordered Bill, the old black revolver in his hand.
The crowd was impressed by that weapon, knowing its history, aseverybody did. Greening's more or less honorable father had carried itwith him when he rode in the train of Quantrell, the infamousbushwhacker. It was the old man's boast to his dying day that he hadexterminated a family of father and five sons in the raid upon Lawrencewith that old weapon, without recharging it.
Joe drove through the open gate without a look behind him. His face waspale, his heart was sick with the humiliation of that day. But he feltthat it was only a temporary cloud into which he had stepped, and thatclearing would come again in a little while. It was inconceivable to himhow anybody could be so foolish as to believe, or even suspect, that hehad murdered Isom Chase.
The assembled people having heard all there was to hear, and seen allthere was to see at the gate, began to straggle back to the farmhouse togossip, to gape, and exclaim. To Greening and his family had fallen theoffice of comforting the widow and arranging for the burial, and now Solhad many offers to sit up with the corpse that night.
Mrs. Newbolt stood at the roadside, looking after the conveyance whichwas taking her son away to jail, until a bend behind a tall hedge hid itfrom her eyes. She made no further attempt to find sympathy or supportamong her neighbors, who looked at her curiously as she stood there, andturned away selfishly when she faced them.
Back over the road that she had hurried along that morning she trudged,slowly and without spirit, her feet like stones. As she went, she triedto arrange the day's happenings in her mind. All was confusion there.The one plain thing, the thing that persisted and obtruded, was thatthey had arrested Joe on a charge that was at once hideous and unjust.
Evening was falling when she reached the turn of the road and lookedahead to her home. She had no heart for supper, no heart to lift thelatch of the kitchen door and enter there. There was no desire in herheart but for her son, and no comfort in the prospect of her oncomingnight.
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