Part 51 (1/2)
”Hit's too late, Dorothy.... I'd only git you kilt as well as me.... I reckon they hain't grudgin' _you_ none, es things stands now.”
But the mob leader laughed, and turning his face to the wife, he ruthlessly tore away even that vestige of rea.s.surance.
”We hain't makin' no brash promises erbout ther woman, Thornton,” he brutally announced. ”I read in her eyes jest now thet she _ree_co'nized one of us--an' hit hain't safe ter know too much.”
They were still working at the ropes on the prisoner's wrists and the knots were not yet secure. The man had gauged his situation and resigned himself to die like a slaughter-house animal, instead of a mountain lion--in order to save his wife. Now they denied him that.
Suddenly his face went black and his eyes became torrential with fury.
His lunging movement was as swift and powerful as a tiger-spring, and his transition from quiet to earthquake violence as abrupt and deadly as the current of the electric chair.
His shoulders and wrists ripped at their bonds, and the men busied about them were hurled away as with a powder blast. The arms came free and the hands seized up a chair. A human tornado was at work in a s.p.a.ce too crowded for the use of firearms; and when the insufficient weapon had been shattered into splinters and fallen in worthless bits there were broken crowns and prostrate figures in that room.
Faces were marked with bruise and blood and laceration--but the odds were too overwhelmingly uneven, and at last they bore him down, pounded and kicked, to the puncheon floor, and when they lifted him to his feet again the ropes that fastened him were firm enough to hold.
Then Parish Thornton spoke again: spoke with a pa.s.sion that seemed almost as destructive as the short-lived chair he had been swinging flail-like, though the panting exertion made his voice come in disjointed and sob-like gasps.
”Ye hain't done yit,” he shouted into their maddened faces as they crowded and yapped about him. ”By dint of numbers ye've done tuck me alive, but thar's still a reckonin' ahead!”
Above the answering chorus of jeers rang his berserk fury of defiance.
”Ye kin go ahead an' hang me now--an' be d.a.m.ned ter ye! Ye kin even murder a woman ef ye've got a mind ter--but thar's a baby in this house thet's comin' ter manhood some day.”
”Ye won't be hyar ter train him up fer vengeance,” came the sneering voice of Bas Rowlett who had stood clear of that conflict; and glaring at him Thornton managed a bitter laugh.
”He won't need no trainin' up,” he retorted. ”Hit's bred in his blood an' his bone ter hate snakes an' kill 'em. He's drunk hit in at his mother's breast an' breathed hit in ther air.... He'll settle our scores some day!”
CHAPTER x.x.xV
Sim Squires knew that when the brief farce of the trial took place he would be called forward to testify with a few prearranged lies. In his mouth was a pebble, put there to change his voice--but in his mutinous heart was an obsession of craving to see Bas Rowlett in such a debased position as that which Parish Thornton occupied--for, of all men, he feared and hated Bas most.
This unrelished partic.i.p.ation in the mob spirit was more abhorrent than it had been before. The scorn of Dorothy's eyes had a scorpion sting that he could not escape--and this woman had given his life an atmosphere of friendliness and kindliness which it had not known before.
”Now,” announced the masked spokesman, ”we're well-nigh ready, an' thar hain't no virtue in bein' dilitary--albeit we don't aim ter hang him untried. Witness Number One, come forward.”
Witness Number One was Sim Squires, and as though his tongue had been stricken with sudden dumbness and his limbs with paralysis, he hung back when he had been called. Slowly he looked at Parish Thornton, whose face was pale, but set once more to the calm of resoluteness--and at the ghost-terror and the lingering contempt in the deep and suffering eyes of the wife.
”Thar's a man hyar in this room,” began Sim Squires, ”thet's done been seekin' evi_dence_ erginst ther riders, an' he's done secured a lavish of hit, too.” So far, his words were running in expected grooves, and as the voice went on a little indistinct because of the pebble under the tongue, his impatient audience accorded him only a perfunctory attention.
”He's done hed spies amongst ye an' he's got evi_dence_ thet no co'te kain't fail ter convict on,” proceeded the witness, slowly. ”He aims ter penitenshery _you_,” his finger rose and settled, pointing toward the man who had acted as spokesman, and who was Rick Joyce. Then it rose again and fell on others, as Sim added, ”an' _you_--an' _you_!”
”We don't aim ter give him no chanst,” interrupted Joyce, and it was then that Sim Squires branched into unantic.i.p.ated ways.
Suddenly this amazing witness ripped off his mask and threw aside his hat. Then he spat out the pebble that interfered with his enunciation and annoyed him, and like the epilepsy victim who slides abruptly from sane normality into his madness, the man became transformed. The timidities that had fettered him and held him a slave to cowardice were swept away like unconsidered drift on the tide of a pa.s.sion that was willing to court death, if vengeance could come first. He had definitely crossed the line of allegiance and meant to swing the fatal fury of that mob from one victim to another, or die in his effort to that end. His eyes were the ember pupils of the madman or the martyr, his face was the frenzied face of a man to whom ordinary considerations no longer count; whose idea as fixed and single, and to whom personal consequences have become unimportant. His body was rigid yet vibrant, and his voice rang through the room as his finger rose and pointed into the face of Bas Rowlett.
”Thet man,” he shouted, ”hes bore ther semblance of yore friend, but he aims ter _dee_stroy ye.... I knows because I've done been his slave an'
he's told me so ... he aims ter hev ye murder Parish Thornton fer him fust ... an' then ter penitenshery ye fer doin' his dirty work. Ye hain't nothin' on G.o.d's green y'arth but only his dupes!”