Part 15 (1/2)

_Parole_

During the next week or two after Christmas the boys made notable progress with their chopping, for even the Doctor had by this time become as expert as any of them in wielding an axe, while the other boys, who could scarcely be more expert with that implement than they were at the beginning, acquired a good deal of extra skill in the particular work they were now doing. They more readily recognized the use to which each piece of timber could be put; they acquired new deftness in shaping railroad ties to their destined use, so that the work was done more quickly and with a smaller expenditure of time and force; especially they learned and invented many devices to facilitate their handling of the great bridge timbers, of which they were now sending many down the chute.

All of them except Ed chopped all day. Ed volunteered to take the duty of camp guard upon himself all day every day, so long as his wound should incapacitate him for the hard work of chopping. There was double guard duty to do now of course, for in addition to the guarding of the camp there was the prisoner to watch. But now that the barricade with its platform was built in front of the hut, Ed was confident of his ability to watch both inside and outside, particularly as the wounded man was pretty nearly helpless still, and the boys took all the guns with them when they went chopping, except the one that Ed was using as sentinel. There was still another advantage in the fact that there was now nearly a foot of snow on the ground, and it would have been easy to see a man toiling over its white surface at a great distance.

So Ed played cook and camp guard all through the days and was excused from all night duty.

In the meantime there was no more trouble from the mountaineers, except that the wounded one in camp continually bewailed his fate and indulged in dismal forebodings of the long term he must serve in prison. Finally one Sunday, when his wounds were nearly well again, he said:

”It ain't so much for myself I care. I kin stand purty nigh anything.

What I'm thinkin' about, boys, is my wife an' my little gal. You see my wife she's consumptive like an' not much fit fer work, an' my little gal, she's only six year old. So I don't know what's to become of 'em when I'm sent up, an' that'll be mighty soon now, as I'm gettin' well enough to walk.”

”Now listen to me a minute,” said Tom in a voice as stern as he could make it with the tears that were in it--for the picture presented to his mind of that poor invalid wife and still more of that little six year old girl left to struggle with that mountain poverty and starvation which he knew something about, had touched all that was tender in his nature.

”Now listen to me! I'm going to have a plain talk with you. The only reason you are to go to prison is that you tried your best to kill Ed.

Why didn't you think of your wife and little girl before you committed that crime? Answer me honestly now!”

”Well, I will, Tom. You see I ain't much account. I ain't enough account to own a little share in one o' the stills that does a purty poor business up here in the mountings. So I has to live on odd jobs like, an' at best I barely manage to keep a little bread and meat in the mouths of my wife an' little gal an' a calico dress on their backs. No, that ain't edzacly the truth nother, an' as you an' me is talkin' fair an' square now, I don't want to misrepresent nothin'. I'll own up that oncet--just oncet I bought the little gal a doll down there in town, jest becase she seemed so lonely an' longin' like as she looked at it.

It cost me five cents.”

By this time all the boys had business with their handkerchiefs, which they felt it necessary to go out of doors to attend to.

After awhile Tom mastered himself sufficiently to say:

”Go on! Tell us why you shot Ed?”

”Well, as I wuz a tellin' you,” resumed the mountaineer, ”I ain't no account an' so I has to live by odd jobs. Well, when you fellers come up here, the other fellers made up their minds that you must go back, an'

so they decided like to have you persecuted till you did go. So, as they didn't want to take the risk of the job theirselves, they come to me an'

another feller--that feller what got his arm broke in your camp--”

”Yes, I remember him,” said Tom; ”go on and tell us all about it.”

”Well, they come to us two no 'count fellers, him an' me, an' says, says they, 'ef you two fellers'll do the job we'll see as how you an' your families will have enough, meal an' meat, to last till blackberry time.'

You see, we no 'count fellers always looked forrard to blackberry time.

Ef we kin pull through till the blackberries is ripe, we're all right for a spell. Well, nuther on us liked the job, but we didn't see no way out'n it. So he come fust an' twicet. The second time he got too bad hurt like to go on with the job, an' so then I took it up. My pard he had reasoned and argified with you an' you wouldn't listen. So the fellers what was hirin' of me says, says they, 'Bill, you've got to shoot. If you kin drap one o' them fellers without gittin' caught they'll quick enough git out'n the mountings.' That's why I shot Ed. You see yourselves as how I couldn't help it.”

All that Tom had tried to tell his comrades about the squalid poverty of the poorer cla.s.s of mountaineers had made no such impression upon their minds as the prisoner's simple narrative. They were horrified at the dest.i.tution which he pictured and shocked at the dullness and perversion of his moral sense, manifested by his confident a.s.sumption that they would see that in trying to kill Ed he had done nothing wrong or unusual. Here was that degradation of mind and soul which frankly regards crime--even including the murder of innocent persons--as a legitimate means of livelihood--like the picking of blackberries--a degradation which nevertheless leaves the soul capable of emotions of affection and tender pity such as this man so manifestly felt for his invalid wife and his ”little gal.”

Unhappily this degradation, this perversion of the moral sense, is not confined to mountain moons.h.i.+ners. There is very much of it in our great cities and it is the thing that gives the police force their hardest work. It is also the source of the most serious danger that threatens all of us.

The man had evidently finished with what he had to say, and as for the boys, they had from the first left this man's case in Little Tom's hands. Their throats ached too badly now with a pained pity, for them to make even a suggestion. So Tom took up the conversation.

”Now I want to say something to you,” he said, ”and I want you to try to understand me. You and I are talking, fair and square, as you said a little while ago, aren't we?”

”That's what we is, Tom,” answered the man; ”an' whatever you say'll be right, I don't doubt; but you see may be I won't quite understand it, like. I'll do my best. But I ain't got no eddication like. All I know is how to write my name, and may be print a few words on paper. The sergeant major taught me that when I was in the army.”

”Then you served in the army?” asked Tom, somewhat eagerly.