Part 52 (1/2)
”Look at him, men!” shouted Sim Squires, following up the wreck of arrogance who through years had brow-beaten him, and becoming in turn himself the bully. ”Look at him huddlin' thar like a whipped cur-dawg!
Hain't he done es good es made confession by ther guilty meanness in his face?”
He paused, and then with a brutal laugh he struck the cowering Rowlett across his mouth--a blow that he had dreamed of in his sleep but never dared to think of when awake--and Rowlett condemned himself to death when he flinched and failed to strike back.
”Jest now, men,” rushed on the exhorter, ”ye seed Thornton thar facin'
death--an' he showed ye how a man kin demean himself when he thinks his time hes come. Take yore choice between them two--an' decide which one needs hangin'!”
Then feeding on the meat of new authority, Sim Squires, who had always been an underling before, seized up from the hearth, where the ashes were dead, a charred stick--and it happened to be a bit of black walnut that had grown and died on the tree which was about to become a gallows.
With its blackened end Sim drew a line across the planks of the floor between himself and Rick Joyce.
”Thar, now,” he pa.s.sionately importuned his hearers. ”Thar hain't room in this country fer a lot of warrin' enemies thet would all be friends save fer mischief makers. Parish Thornton hes done admitted thar's good men amongst ye, an' we've agreed ter punish them briggatty fellers thet kilt Pete Doane, so thar hain't rightfully no grudge left outstandin'. I takes up my stand on this side of thet line, along with Parish Thornton, an' I summonses every man thet's decent amongst ye all ter come over hyar an' stand with us. We aims ter hev our hangin' without no _dee_fault, but with a diff'rent man swingin' on ther rope!”
For the s.p.a.ce of forty seconds that seemed as many minutes a thunder-brooding tension hung in the stillness of the room--then without haste or excitement Rick Joyce took off his hat and dropped it to the floor. After it he flung his mask, and when he had crossed the line, he turned.
”Come on, men,” he gave brusque and half-peremptory invitation, ”this hyar's whar we b'longs at.”
At first they responded singly and hesitantly, but soon it was a small stampede--save for those who kept guard at the doors--and ten minutes later Parish Thornton stood free of limb and Bas Rowlett trembled, putty pale, in the centre of the room with bound wrists and a noose draped across his shoulders.
”I only asks one thing of ye,” faltered Bas, from whose soul had oozed the last drop of manly resistance, ”I come hyar ter crave this woman's pardon--I still wants ter do thet--without n.o.body else ter heer what I says.”
”Ef she's willin' ter listen, we'll let ye talk,” acceded Squires, who found himself unchallenged spokesman now. ”But we won't take no chances with ye. When ther rope's over ther limb an' everything's ready, then ye kin hev yore say.”
Outside the night was as gracious as had been the last, when Old Hump Doane had sat waiting vainly for the return of his son; but across the moonlit sky drifted squadrons of fleecy cloud sails, and through the plumed head of the mighty walnut sounded the restive whisper of a breeze.
The house stood squarely blocked with cobalt shadows about it, and the hills were brooding in blue-black immensities--but over the valley was a flooding wash of platinum and silver.
Fragrances and quiet cadences stole along the warm current, but the song of the whippoorwill was genuine now, and plaintive with a saddened sweetness.
The walnut tree itself, a child of the forest that had, through generations, been the friend of man, stood like a monument in the silence and majesty of its own long memories.
Under its base, where the roots sank deep into the foundations of the enduring hills, slept the dead who had loved it long ago. Perhaps in its pungent and aromatic sap ran something of the converted life and essence that had been their blood. Its bole, five feet of stalwart diameter, rose straight and tapering to the first right-angle limbs, each in itself almost a tree. Its mult.i.tude of lance-head leaves swept outward and upward in countless succession to the feathery crests that stirred seventy feet overhead--seeming to brush the large, low-hanging stars that the moon had dimmed.
All was tranquil and idyllic there--until the house door opened and a line of men filed out, bringing to his shameful end a human creature who shambled with the wretchedness of broken nerves.
Over the lowest branch, with business-like precision, Sim Squires pitched a stone on the end of a long cord, and to the cord he fastened the rope's end. All that was needed now was the weight which the rope was to lift, and in the blue-ink shadow that mercifully cloaked it and made it vague they placed the bound figure of their man.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
As though to mask a picture of such violence the tree's heavy canopy made that spot one of Stygian murk, and even the moon hid its face just then, so that the world went black, and the stars seemed more brilliant against their inky velvet. But the light had held until the grim preparations were finished, and then when Bas Rowlett had taken his appointed place, tethered and wearing the hempen loop, when the other end of the long line had been pa.s.sed through the broken slat of the closed window shutters, where it would be held by many hands in a.s.surance against escape, Sim Squires kept his promise.
His followers trooped callously back into the house and he himself remained there, on watch, only until with the stiffness of a sleep walker Dorothy Thornton appeared for a moment in the open door and came slowly to the foot of the tree.
She could scarcely see the two men shrouded there in the profundity of shadow, and she had almost walked into the one who was to die before she realized his nearness and drew back shuddering.
Then Sim, who was holding the loose end of the rope so that it would not slacken too freely, put it in her hand and, as their fingers touched, found it icy.