The Furnace of Gold

by Philip Verrill Mighels

  CHAPTER XXI

  IN THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE

  Mob madness is beyond explanation. Cattle stampeding are no moresenseless than men in such a state. Goldite, however, was not onlyhabitually keyed to the highest of tension, but it had recently beenexcited to the breaking point by several contributing factors. Lawlessthefts of one another's claims, ore stealing, high pressure over thecoming rush to the Indian reservation, and a certain apprehensionengendered by the deeds of those liberated convicts--all these elementshad aroused an over-revulsion of feeling towards criminality and adesire to apply some manner of law. And the primal laws are the lawsthat spring into being at such a time as this--the laws that cry outfor an eye for an eye and a swiftness of legal execution.

  Into the vortex of Goldite's sudden revulsion Van was swept like astraw. There was no real chance for a hearing. His friends of themorning had lost all sense of loyalty. They were almost as crazed asthose whom his recent success had irritated. The story of his row withCulver had spread throughout the confines of the camp. No link in thechain of circumstantial evidence seemed wanting to convict him. Abawling sea of human beings surrounded him with violence and menace.

  To escape the over-wrought citizens, the sheriff, assuming charge ofVan, dragged him on top of a stack of lumber, piled three feet highbefore a building. The cry for a rope and a lynching began with apromptness that few would have expected. In normal times it couldscarcely have been broached.

  Snatching new-made deputies, hit-or-miss from the mob, and summarilydemanding their services, the sheriff exerted his utmost powers to stemthe tide that was rising. Something akin to a trial began then andthere. A big red-faced drummer from Chicago, a man that Van had neverseen, became his voluntary advocate, standing between him and the mob.

  He had power, that man, both of limb and presence. His voice, also,was mighty. He shoved men about like rubber puppets and shouted hisdemands for law and order.

  Van, having flung off half a dozen citizens, who in the excitement hadfelt some fanatical necessity for clutching him, faced the human wolvesabout him in a spirit of angry resentment. The big man from Chicagomowed his way to the pile of lumber and clambered up by the sheriff.The pile raised its occupants only well above the surging pack of faces.

  "Stop your howling! Stop your noise!" roared the drummer from hiselevation. "Don't you want to give this man a chance?"

  "Don't you want to give this man a chance?"]

  He was heard throughout the street.

  "He's got to prove his innocence or hang!" cried someone shrilly. "Amurder foul as that!"

  Another one bawled: "Where was he then? Make him tell where he was atsix o'clock!"

  Culver's watch had been shattered and stopped at precisely six o'clock,presumably by his fall against a table in his office, when he suddenlywent down, at the hands of his assassin. This fact was in possessionof the crowd.

  A general shout for Van to explain where he was at the vital momentarose from all the crowd. The drummer turned to Van.

  "There you are," he said. "There's your chance. If you wasn't aroundthe surveyor's shack, you ought to be able to prove it."

  Van could have proved his alibi at once, by sending around to Queenie'sresidence. He was nettled into a stubbornness of mind and righteousanger by all this senseless accusation. He did not realize hisdanger--the blackness of the case against him. That a lynching waspossible he could scarcely have been made to believe. Nevertheless, asthe Queenie matter was one of no secrecy and the facts must soon beknown, he was turning to the drummer to make his reply when his eye wascaught by a face, far out in the mass of human forms.

  It was Beth that he saw, her cheek intensely white in the lightstreaming forth from a store. Bostwick was there at her side. Bethhad been caught in the press of the throng as they came from thetelegraph office.

  He realized that at best his story concerning Queenie would besufficiently black. With Beth in this theater of accusation the storyof Queenie must wait.

  "It's nobody's business where I was," he said. "This whole affair isabsurd!"

  Half a dozen of the men who were nearest heard his reply. One of themroared it out lustily. The mob was enraged. The cries for a violenttermination to the scene increased in volume. Men were shouting,swearing, and surging back and forth tumultuously, wrought to a frenzyof primal virtue.

  One near Beth called repeatedly for a lynching. He had cut a long newpiece of rope from a coil at a store of supplies and was trying to dragit through the crowd.

  The girl had heard and seen it all. She realized its fullsignificance. She had never in her life felt so horribly oppressedwith a sense of terrible things impending. Impetuously she accosted aman who stood at her side.

  "Oh, tell them he was with me!" she said.

  The man looked her over, and raising himself on his tip toes, shook hishat wildly at the mob.

  "Say," he shouted at the top of his might, "here's a girl he was withat six o'clock."

  It seemed as if only the men near at hand either heard or paidattention. On the farther side, away from Beth, the shouts for mob lawwere increasing. She turned to Bostwick hotly.

  "Can't you do anything? Tell them he was there with us--down at Mrs.Dick's at six o'clock!"

  "He wasn't!" said Searle. "He left there at five forty-five."

  The man who had shouted listened to them both.

  "Five forty-five?" he repeated. "That makes a difference!"

  The drummer had caught the shout from out at the edge.

  "Who's that?" he called. "Who's got that alibi?"

  "All wrong!--No good!" yelled the man who stood by Beth.

  The girl had failed to realize how her statement would sound--in such aplace as Goldite. Van had turned sick when it reached him. He wasemphatically denying the story. The gist of it went through the massof maddened beings, only to be so soon impugned by the man who hadstarted it from Beth. The fury, at what was deemed an attempteddeception, burst out with accumulated force.

  The sheriff had drawn a revolver and was shouting to the mob to keepaway.

  "This man has got to go to jail!" he yelled. "You've got to actaccordin' to the law!"

  He ordered his deputies to clear the crowd and make ready for retreat.Three of them endeavored to obey. Their efforts served to aggravatethe mob.

  Confusion and chaos of judgment seemed rising like a tide. In the veryair was a feeling that suddenly something would go, something too farstrained to hold, and some terrible deed occur before these peoplecould ask themselves how it had been accomplished.

  The fellow with the rope was being boosted forward by half a dozenintoxicated fools. Had the rope been a burning fuse it could scarcelyhave ignited more dangerous material than did its strands of manilla,in those who could lay their hands upon it.

  The drummer was shouting himself raw in the throat--in vain.

  Van was courting disaster by the very defiance of his attitude. Itseemed as if nothing could save him, when two separate things occurred.

  The doctor who had been with Van at Queenie's death arrived in thepress, got wind of the crisis, and vehemently protested the truth.Simultaneously, the lumberman, Trimmer, drunk, and enjoying what hedeemed a joke, hoarsely confided to some sober men the fact that Cayusehad done the murder.

  Even then, when two centers of opposition to the madness of the mob hadbeen created, the menace could not at once be halted.

  The man with the rope had approached so near the lumber-pile that thesheriff could all but reach him. A furious battle ensued, and wagedaround the planks, between the deputies and lynchers. It lasted tillfifty active men of the camp, aroused to a sense of reaction by thefacts that were now becoming known, hurled the struggling fightersapart and dragged them off, all the while spreading the news they hadheard concerning the half-breed Indian.

  No less excited when at last they knew that Van was innocent, the greatcrowd still occupied the street, hailing Trimmer to t
he lumber-pile anddemanding to know how he came by the facts, and where Cayuse had gone.

  Trimmer was frightened into soberness--at least into sobernesssufficient to protect himself and McCoppet. He said he had seen theIndian coming from Culver's office, with blood upon his hands. TheIndian had gone straight westward from the town, to elude pursuit inthe mountains.

  The fact that Van had been at Queenie's side at her death became townproperty at once. It came in all promptness to Beth.

  With a feeling of sickness pervading all her being, she was glad tohave Bostwick take her home.

  It was late when at last the street was clear, and Van could finallymake his escape from danger and returning friends. Dave by then hadfound himself; that is, he made his way, thus tardily, to thehorseman's side--and the two went at length to their dinner.

  At half-past eight, with the moon well up, Dave and Van were ready fordeparture. Their horses were saddled. One extra animal was packedwith needed provisions for the crew on the "Laughing Water" claim. Vanhad ordered all he could for Queenie's final journey--the camp's bestpossible funeral, which he could not remain to attend. There wasnothing to do but to mount and ride away, but--Beth was down at Mrs.Dick's.

  Resistance was useless. Bidding Dave wait with the horses at the yard.Van made his way around through the shadows of the houses, and comingout upon a rocky hill, a little removed from the boarding place, wasstartled to see Beth abruptly rise before him.

  The house had oppressed her--and the moon had called. Bostwick, inalarm concerning possible disaster to the plans he had made withMcCoppet, now that Culver was dead, had gone to seek the gambler outand ascertain the status of affairs.