by Don Marquis
CHAPTER XX
The doctor acted as his own lawyer, and the pock-marked man, whose namewas Grimes, as the lawyer agin us. You could see that crowd had made upits mind before-hand, and was only giving us what they called a trialto satisfy their own conscience. But the fight was betwixt Grimes andDoctor Kirby the hull way through.
One witness was a feller that had been in the hotel at Cottonville thenight we struck that place. We had drunk some of his licker.
"This man admitted himself that he was here to turn the niggers white,"said the witness.
Doctor Kirby had told 'em what kind of medicine he was selling. We bothremembered it. We both had to admit it.
The next witness was the feller that run the tavern at Bairdstown. Hehad with him, fur proof, a bottle of the stuff we had brought with us.He told how we had went away and left it there that very morning.
Another witness told of seeing the doctor talking in the road to thatthere nigger bishop. Which any one could of seen it easy enough, furthey wasn't nothing secret about it. We had met him by accident. But youcould see it made agin us.
Another witness says he lives not fur from that Big Bethel church.He says he has noticed the niggers was worked up about something furseveral days. They are keeping the cause of it secret. He went over toBig Bethel church the night before, he said, and he listened outside oneof the windows to find out what kind of doctrine that crazy bishop waspreaching to them. They was all so worked up, and the power was with'em so strong, and they was so excited they wouldn't of hearn an armymarching by. He had hearn the bishop deliver a message to his flock fromthe Messiah. He had seen him go wild, afterward, and preach an equalitysermon. That was the lying message the old bishop had took to 'em, andthat Sam had told us about. But how was this feller to know it was alie? He believed in it, and he told it in a straight-ahead way thatwould make any one see he was telling the truth as he thought it to be.
Then they was six other witnesses. All had been in the gang that lynchedthe nigger that day. That nigger had confessed his crime before he waslynched. He had told how the niggers had been expecting of a Messiah furseveral days, and how the doctor was him. He had died a-preaching anda-prophesying and thinking to the last minute maybe he was going to gettook up in a chariot of fire.
Things kept looking worse and worse fur us. They had the story as theniggers thought it to be. They thought the doctor had deliberatelyrepresented himself as such, instead of which the doctor had refused tobe represented as that there Messiah. More than that, he had neversold a bottle of that medicine. He had flung the idea of selling it waybehind him jest as soon as he seen what the situation really was in theblack counties. He had even despised himself fur going into it. But thelooks of things was all the other way.
Then the doctor give his own testimony.
"Gentlemen," he says, "it is true that I came down here to try out thatstuff in the bottle there, and see if a market could be worked upfor it. It is also true that, after I came here and discovered whatconditions were, I decided not to sell the stuff. I didn't sell any.About this Messiah business I know very little more than you do. Thesituation was created, and I blundered into it. I sent the negroes wordthat I was not the person they expected. The bishop lied to them. Thatis my whole story."
But they didn't believe him. Fur it was jest what he would of said if hehad been guilty, as they thought him. And then Grimes gets up and says:
"Gentlemen, I demand for this prisoner the penalty of death.
"He has lent himself to a situation calculated to disturb in this countythe peaceful domination of the black race by the white.
"He is a Northern man. But that is not against him. If this were a casewhere leniency were possible, it should count for him, as indicating anignorance of the gravity of conditions which confront us here, every dayand all the time. If he were my own brother, I would still demand hisdeath.
"Lest he should think my attitude dictated by any lingering sectionalprejudice, I may tell him what you all know--you people among whom Ihave lived for thirty years--that I am a Northern man myself.
"The negro who was lynched to-day might never have committed the crimehe did had not the wild, disturbing dream of equality been stirring inhis brain. Every speech, every look, every action which encourages thatidea is a crime. In this county, where the blacks outnumber us, we musteither rule as masters or be submerged.
"This man is still believed by the negroes to possess some miraculouspower. He is therefore doubly dangerous. As a sharp warning to themhe must die. His death will do more toward ending the trouble he hasprepared than the death of a dozen negroes.
"And as God is my witness, I speak and act not through passion, but fromthe dictates of conscience."
He meant it, Grimes did. And when he set down they was a hush. And thenWill, the chairman, begun to call the roll.
I never been much of a person to have bad dreams or nightmares or thingslike that. But ever since that night in that schoolhouse, if I do have anightmare, it takes the shape of that roll being called. Every word waslike a spade grating and gritting in damp gravel when a grave is dug. Itsounded so to me.
"Samuel Palmour, how do you vote?" that chairman would say.
Samuel Palmour, or whoever it was, would hist himself to his feet, andhe would say something like this:
"Death."
He wouldn't say it joyous. He wouldn't say it mad. He would be pale whenhe said it, mebby--and mebby trembling. But he would say it like it wasa duty he had to do, that couldn't be got out of. That there trial hadlasted so long they wasn't hot blood left in nobody jest then--only coldblood, and determination and duty and principle.
"Buck Hightower," says the chairman, "how do you vote?"
"Death," says Buck; "death for the man. But say, can't we jest LICK thekid and turn him loose?"
And so it went, up one side the room and down the other. Grimes hadshowed 'em all their duty. Not but what they had intended to do itbefore Grimes spoke. But he had put it in such a way they seen it wassomething with even MORE principle to it than they had thought it wasbefore.
"Billy Harden," says the chairman, "how do you vote?" Billy was the lastof the bunch. And most had voted fur death. Billy, he opened his mouthand he squared himself away to orate some. But jest as he done so, thedoor opened and Old Daddy Withers stepped in. He had been gone so longI had plumb forgot him. Right behind him was a tall, spare feller, withblack eyes and straight iron-gray hair.
"I vote," says Billy Harden, beginning of his speech, "I vote for death.The reason upon which I base--"
But Doctor Kirby riz up and interrupted him.
"You are going to kill me," he said. He was pale but he was quiet, andhe spoke as calm and steady as he ever done in his life. "You are goingto kill me like the crowd of sneaking cowards that you are. And you AREsuch cowards that you've talked two hours about it, instead of doing it.And I'll tell you why you've talked so much: because no ONE of you alonewould dare to do it, and every man of you in the end wants to go awaythinking that the other fellow had the biggest share in it. And no ONEof you will fire the gun or pull the rope--you'll do it ALL TOGETHER, ina crowd, because each one will want to tell himself he only touched therope, or that HIS GUN missed.
"I know you, by God!" he shouted, flushing up into a passion--and itbrought blood into their faces, too--"I know you right down to yourroots, better than you know yourselves."
He was losing hold of himself, and roaring like a bull and flinging outtaunts that made 'em squirm. If he wanted the thing over quick, hewas taking jest the way to warm 'em up to it. But I don't think he wasfiggering on anything then, or had any plan up his sleeve. He had madeup his mind he was going to die, and he was so mad because he couldn'tget in one good lick first that he was nigh crazy. I looked to see himlose all sense in a minute, and rush amongst them guns and end it in awhirl.
But jest as I figgered he was on his tiptoes fur that, and was gettingup my own sand, he throwed a look my way. And something sobered h
im. Hestood there digging his finger nails into the palms of his hands fur aminute, to get himself back. And when he spoke he was sort of husky.
"That boy there," he says. And then he stops and kind of chokes up. Andin a minute he was begging fur me. He tells 'em I wasn't mixed up innothing. He wouldn't of done it fur himself, but he begged fur me.Nobody had paid much attention to me from the first, except BuckHightower had put in a good word fur me. But somehow the doctor had gotthe crowd listening to him agin, and they all looked at me. It got nextto me. I seen by the way they was looking, and I felt it in the air,that they was going to let me off.
But Doctor Kirby, he had always been my friend. It made me sore fur tosee him thinking I wasn't with him. So I says:
"You better can that line of talk. They don't get you without they getme, too. You orter know I ain't a quitter. You give me a pain."
And the doctor and me stood and looked at each other fur a minute. Hegrinned at me, and all of a sudden we was neither one of us much givinga whoop, fur it had come to us both at oncet what awful good friends wewas with each other.
But jest then they come a slow, easy-going sort of a voice from theback part of the room. That feller that had come in along with Old DaddyWithers come sauntering down the middle aisle, fumbling in his coatpocket, and speaking as he come.
"I've been hearing a great deal of talk about killing people in the lastfew minutes," he says.
Everybody rubbered at him.