Part 15 (2/2)
”Yes?” I questioned.
”Six months later Con Hoover was shot from the laurel on this road. He had allied himself with those who sought to avenge Keithley.”
I nodded my head.
”There were Cale Springer, Bud Dode--I could enumerate other victims, but that is all unnecessary detail. What concerns us is this. Jim Garvin is county judge. In a rough way he is the political boss of the region and he has built up a fortune. His own gun is unnotched, but a half-dozen men who have incurred his displeasure have come to abrupt ends. The newspapers in Louisville and Lexington have intimated that besides being at the head of fiscal affairs and operating a general store the judge also issues his orders to a murder syndicate.”
”Why,” I demanded in some disgust, ”hasn't it been proven?”
”It is difficult to prove things of this sort--when the defendant is more powerful than the law and when juries walk in terror,” Weighborne reminded me. ”He has twice been tried for complicity. A company of state guards patrolled the court-house yard to rea.s.sure venire-men and witnesses. The only result was the defeat, at the next election, of the judge and prosecutor who had made themselves obnoxious.”
”Why,” I inquired, ”aren't such malefactors taken into a civilized circuit, on a change of venue, and tried where jurors are not intimidated?”
”They have been--with the same result,” affirmed my informant. ”You see, while the jurors were freed from fear, the witnesses knew they must return home.”
”Shall we be likely to meet this highly interesting character?” I questioned.
”The store where our wagon turns back,” said Weighborne, ”is his place.”
”Then I am to be careful not to form or express any opinion adverse to judicious homicide? Is that the point?”
Weighborne smiled.
”Our plans involve bringing a branch railroad along the way we have been traveling,” he replied, ”and the coming of that railroad means the death knell of Jim Garvin's power. What is still more to the point, our attorney here and the man for whose house we are bound is the Hon.
Calloway Marcus. He was Keithley's law partner, and he is a marked man.
He it was who prosecuted Garvin--and lost his official head. His actual head he keeps on his shoulders by riding at the center of a bodyguard. I tell you these matters so that you may watch your words.”
”Shall we encounter open hostility at this place?” I inquired.
Weighborne shook his head. ”On the contrary, we shall be most courteously received. Politeness is highly esteemed hereabouts. The fact that a man means to 'lay-way' you to-night, with a squirrel gun, is not deemed sufficient reason for relaxing his courtesy this afternoon.”
An hour later our conveyance drew up at the junction of two ragged roads where thin, outcropping ledges of limestone went down to the rim of a shallow stream. Beyond the water rose a beetling bluff. One could imagine that when summer brought to this hollow in the hills its richness of green, and its profusion of trumpet flower and laurel and rhododendron, there must be an eye-filling beauty, but now it was unspeakably raw and desolate.
Two houses were in sight and both were of depressing ugliness. In the fork of the road where the ground was trodden hard stood the ”store.” It was a one-room shack built of logs and boarded over, but innocent of paint. A leanto porch, disfigured by a few advertising signs, gave entrance to a narrow door. The second house set back and higher up the slope of the mountain. Its solidity was that of mortised logs and its windows were protected behind solid shutters. Inside there was plainly an abundance of s.p.a.ce, as befitted the dwelling-place of the district's overlord. A clump of white-armed sycamores partly masked its front, but through the naked branches one could see that for a hundred yards about it, in every direction, lay unbroken clearing, and that for all its civilian seeming it might, if need arose, stand siege against anything less formidable than gatling guns.
Stamping the cold and cramp from our feet, we settled our score with the liveryman, and turned into the store.
CHAPTER XVIII
A CHAT WITH A DICTATOR.
Inside Judge Garvin's store we came upon a group of slovenly loungers.
Had my mind been free enough of its own troubling thoughts to spare a remnant of interest, I should have found this new and strange scheme of things engrossing. I was in a sc.r.a.p of America which the onrus.h.i.+ng tide of world advancement had left stranded and forgotten. Here a people of unmixed British stock lived primitive lives, fought feudal wars, and shrined every virtue high except regard for human life.
These four narrow walls in part epitomised that life. The shelves back of the counters displayed what things they held essentials: rough crockery, coa.r.s.e calicoes, canned goods, barrels of brown sugar, brogans, stick candy and ammunition.
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