Part 39 (1/2)
”No, I reckon not, his notions are so high-flown,” the colonel admitted, with evident pride in the lofty bearing of the widow's son.
”He's longing for a run over the hills,” said she. ”He told me he was.”
”A year of it in there would kill him,” the colonel said. ”We must get him a lawyer who can disentangle him. I never saw anybody go down like that boy has gone down in the last month. It's like taking a wild Indian out of the woods and putting him in a cage.”
The colonel put aside the corn picture for the day, and went out to confer with Judge Burns, a local lawyer who had gained a wide reputation in the defense of criminal cases. He was a doubly troubled man when he returned home that evening, for Joe had been firm in his refusal either to dismiss Hammer or admit another to his defense. In the library he had found Alice, downcast and gloomy, on the margin of tears.
”Why, honey, you mustn't mope around this way,” he remonstrated gently.
”What is it--what's gone wrong with my little manager?”
She raised up from huddling her head against her arms on the table, pushed her fallen hair back from her eyes and gave him a wan smile.
”I just felt so lonely and depressed somehow,” said she, placing her hand on his where it lay on the table. ”Never mind me, for I'll be all right. What did he say?”
”Judge Burns?”
”Joe.”
The colonel drew a chair near and sat down, flinging out his hand with impatient gesture.
”I can't do anything with him,” said he. ”He says one lawyer will do as well as another, and Hammer's doing all that can be done. 'They'll believe me or they'll not believe me, colonel, and that's all there is to it,' says he, 'and the best lawyer in the world can't change that.'
And I don't know but he's right, too,” the colonel sighed. ”He's got to come out with that story, every word of it, or there'll never be a jury picked in the whole State of Missouri that'll take any stock in his testimony.”
”It will be a terrible thing for his mother if they don't believe him,”
said she.
”We'll do all that he'll allow us to do for him, we can't do any more.
It's a gloomy outlook, a gloomy case all through. It was a bad piece of business when that mountain woman bound him out to old Isom Chase, to take his kicks and curses and live on starvation rations. He's the last boy in the world that you'd conceive of being bound out; he don't fit the case at all.”
”No, he doesn't,” said she, reflectively.
”But don't let the melancholy thing settle on you and disturb you, child. He'll get out of it--or he'll not--one way or the other, I reckon. It isn't a thing for you to take to heart and worry over. I never should have taken you to that gloomy old jail to see him, at all.”
”I can't forget him there--I'll always see him there!” she shuddered.
”He's above them all--they'll never understand him, never in this world!”
She got up, her hair hanging upon her shoulders, and left him abruptly, as if she had discovered something that lay in her heart. Colonel Price sat looking after her, his back very straight, his hand upon his knee.
”Well!” said he. Then, after a long ruminative spell: ”Well!”
That same hour Hammer was laboring with his client in the jail, as he had labored fruitlessly before, in an endeavor to induce him to impart to him the thing that he had concealed at the coroner's inquest into Isom Chase's death. Hammer a.s.sured him that it would not pa.s.s beyond him in case that it had no value in establis.h.i.+ng his innocence.
”Mr. Hammer, sir,” said Joe, with unbending dignity and firmness, ”if the information you ask of me was mine to give, freely and honorably, I'd give it. You can see that. Maybe something will turn up between now and Monday that will make a change, but if not, you'll have to do the best you can for me the way it stands. Maybe I oughtn't expect you to go into the court and defend me, seeing that I can't help you any more than I'm doing. If you feel that you'd better drop out of the case, you're free to do it, without any hard feelings on my part, sir.”
Hammer had no intention of dropping the case, hopeless as he felt the defense to be. Even defeat would be glorious, and loss profitable, for his connection with the defense would sound his name from one end of the state to the other.
”I wouldn't desert you in the hour of your need, Joe, for anything they could name,” said Hammer, with significant suggestion.
His manner, more than his words, carried the impression that they had named sums, recognizing in him an insuperable barrier to the state's case, but that he had put his tempters aside with high-born scorn.