Part 13 (2/2)
Frost and ushered into the office. The deceased was then lying on his face with his feet near the window. There was much blood on the floor, and spattered on the legs of an office chair that stood close by the head. No weapon of any kind was found in the office, and the object of the murder was explained at a glance; the desk was rifled, the safe was open, and while the papers therein were found undisturbed, the cash drawer, in which it was known that the deceased generally kept a good deal of money, was empty. Other testimony established the fact that he had as much as five hundred dollars in the drawer on the previous Sat.u.r.day. In presence of the mayor, constable, Mr. Frost, and one or two neighbors, the bullet had been cut out from behind by the doctor. It was slightly flattened, and in shape, and in its exact weight as subsequently determined, it corresponded exactly with those of a ”five-shooting” revolver of peculiar make known as ”the Avenger.” To Mr.
Lowrie's knowledge only two pistols of that kind were owned in that neighborhood, and both had been bought by him two years before at a time when there was a scare about mad dogs. One he still owned, and it was now at home, locked up in his desk; the other was Richard Graham's, and he had seen it in his possession less than a week ago.
Mr. Frost's testimony, given with much emotion and apparent reluctance, was to this effect: His first knowledge of the murder was Monday morning about six o'clock, when summoned to the mill by the tidings that Mr.
Morrow had not been home all night. Going to the east entrance, he found the boy, Schaffer, and two young farmers, frightened and excited over what they had seen in the office. He went in at once, followed by them, and saw at a glance that murder had been done, though his first thought was suicide. He merely turned the body enough to see that the wound was in the face, and to satisfy himself and the others that no pistol was near, and then, pointing to the fact that the safe and desk were both open, he ordered everybody out and closed the door until the arrival of the officials from Nemahbin.
Questioned as to his own movements the previous night, he said that after supper, when Graham drove the ladies to town, he himself had gone home and read an hour, but, feeling drowsy, had gone to bed, waking up some hours later with a headache on hearing the boy coming in. The boy said he didn't know the time, but it must have been eleven o'clock, and just then Graham came up the steps and the boy went to his own room; witness called out to him twice and got no answer, and at last, thinking it queer that Graham did not go to bed, but kept moving briskly about, he rose and went into the front room in his night-s.h.i.+rt, and found Graham packing a big satchel he had, and rummaging through the clothes on the pegs. Asked him what was the matter, and Graham hardly noticed him--merely said he was going away awhile; could not help noticing how queer and strange he looked, and how oddly he behaved; he was very pale, and muttered to himself every now and then; asked him twice if he had any reason for going, and when he would return, but only got evasive answers and averted looks; knew that there had been ugly words between the deceased and Graham very often during the month past, and that there was an angry altercation between them down at the mill just before supper-time; the deceased had told him that he was going to discharge Graham; he was getting too insolent and rebellious to suit him; Graham hardly ate anything at supper, and the old man did not come up to the house until after they had driven off to church. That was the last he saw of him alive--as he pa.s.sed the cottage on his way to the mill-house. Asked as to whether anything of unusual or suspicious nature had occurred during the day or evening, Frost said that one thing struck him as queer. Graham's revolver hung habitually at the head of his bed, and when he concluded to go to bed that evening he went into Graham's room to look at the clock and saw that his pistol was gone. It had been there during the day, and he never knew him to carry it before. Asked if he saw it in Graham's possession Sunday night, he replied that he saw it sticking from the hip pocket of his trousers; that Graham had his coat off and was was.h.i.+ng his hands at the time. One other ugly circ.u.mstance was noted: Graham had been burning a lot of papers and things in the stove before being interrupted. When the stove was examined in the morning some b.u.t.tons were found, charred and partially destroyed in the ashes, but they were clearly identified as the b.u.t.tons of the canvas overalls Graham wore around the mill--which were missing--and behind the stove was found a fine cambric handkerchief that Graham only used when he wore his best, or Sunday suit, which he had on all that day, and this handkerchief was stained with blood.
Nellie Morrow was so fearfully agitated by the tragedy that her own evidence was only drawn from her bit by bit. She confirmed the statement of d.i.c.k's pallor and his silence all that evening, and then with hysterical sobbing told of their quarrel after church and his leaving her, as he said, never to return; but she protested that he had ”never a thing against father,” and that he never, never could have harmed him.
All other obtainable evidence had the same general tendency, and despite his years of st.u.r.dy probity and the excellence of his character, d.i.c.k Graham had to bear the burden of the acc.u.mulation of evidence against him. The absent always have the worst of it, and his flight had confirmed the theories of many an unwilling mind. He was the murderer of his former friend and benefactor.
CHAPTER IV.
A week pa.s.sed, and with no tidings of him. Detectives had been scouring the country in every direction. A man answering his description was arrested in Chicago, and turned out to be somebody else. A dozen times it was reported that now the sleuth-hounds of the law had run down their victim, but the entire month of July pa.s.sed away, and the community had gradually settled down to the belief that Graham had made good his escape and taken with him some five hundred dollars of his murdered master's money.
Old Morrow had been duly and reverently buried. A younger brother from a distant state came to the scene as executor of the will, in conjunction with Mr. Lowrie, and under his management the mill resumed its functions for the benefit of the estate. Except some legacies to this brother and to the sister who had taken charge of Nellie and his household, old Morrow had left his property, valued at over forty thousand dollars, to be divided equally between his two children should Sam reappear; but if proof of his death were obtained, his share was to go to Nellie.
A week after the funeral, acting on the advice of the minister and the village doctor, Nellie's relatives sent her to Chicago. She had suffered greatly in health, and was in a condition of nervous depression.
Whenever d.i.c.k's crime was mentioned in her presence, she would vehemently a.s.sert her belief in his innocence, and then shudderingly accuse herself, with piteous crying, of being the cause of all his trouble, and perhaps of her father's death. Another thing. She who had plainly shown herself fascinated by Mr. Frost's many graces and attractions during the preceding winter, now refused to see him. He hung around the house, full of respectful sympathy and lover-like interest, but was visibly chagrined at her persistent avoidance. To the minister she confessed that she had been greatly interested in Frost--perhaps a little in love with him; he flattered and delighted her, and it made d.i.c.k jealous. She didn't know how or why she so encouraged him, but she had, and now she shrank from seeing him at all. Her deep affliction would excuse it.
A week after she left for Chicago Mr. Frost concluded that he would go thither himself. The new master needed no bookkeeper, he said, and Frost was too fine a gentleman to do d.i.c.k's work around the mill. He was neither invited to go nor to stay. He was allowed to go and come without apparent let or hindrance, yet, before the train which bore him away was well out of sight, a new farm-hand, who worked at odd jobs around a neighboring place on the lake, suddenly entered the railway station, wrote ten hurried words on a telegraph-blank, and handed it to the operator, whereupon the operator gazed at him in quick surprise, then whistled softly to himself, nodded appreciatively, and clicked away the message, with the addition of a cabalistic ”Rush,” and Mr. Frost's train was boarded at Milwaukee by a number of people who took no special note of him, and by one man who never lost sight of him from that moment until he locked his bedroom door behind him at night.
Then the minister received a call from the new farm-hand, who brought with him a young man who worked on a place over near Eagle Prairie, a railway station some distance off to the southwest. This young man had spent Sunday calling on a sweetheart in 'Mahbin, and had started about 7.30 p.m. to walk to the large town seven miles away, where he would take the cars homeward. He saw Nellie, her aunt, and a young man driving into town, and by eight o'clock he himself was pa.s.sing the mill. It was just growing dark, so that he could not distinguish faces, but he saw two men standing by the office--one short, stout, and elderly, the other tall and slender and straight. The older man was talking furiously and angrily; heard him say, ”I told you an hour ago to keep away from me.
You have lied to me right along. You are a thief and a scoundrel, I believe, and you are a d.a.m.ned coward and deserter--a deserter, by G.o.d!
and I've got the papers to prove it!”
What the tall man said he could not hear. He spoke low--seemed to be arguing with the old man, begging him to be quiet, and they went into the office. Then the young man walked on a few hundred yards, when it came on to rain very hard, and he stopped and took shelter under a little fis.h.i.+ng-shed there was right at the edge of the lake. The rain held up in fifteen minutes, and he started on again over the causeway, ”and hadn't more'n got a rod” when he heard what sounded like a pistol-shot back at the mill. He stopped short and listened two minutes, but heard nothing more, so went on and thought no more of it until he heard of the murder--but that was not until a week after it happened, when he came up from the farm to Eagle village and heard people talking about it.
But with the first week in August came exciting news. Far to the northwest across the Missouri, d.i.c.k Graham had been traced and followed by a Wisconsin detective, who found him in the uniform of the regular army, just marching off with his comrades to join General Terry's forces, then in the field up the Yellowstone. In his possession was the Avenger revolver and over one hundred dollars in greenbacks. On two five-dollar bills there was a broad and ugly stain, which microscopic examination proved to be blood. Graham appeared utterly stunned at the arrest; expressed the greatest grief and horror at hearing of the murder of Mr. Morrow, and professed his entire willingness to go back and stand trial. The story of his ”escape” to that distance was now easily told.
The detectives had speedily satisfied themselves he had got away on none of the regular trains that week, but one bright fellow had learned that four cars full of troops had pa.s.sed west late that Sunday night, and followed the clue. They had gone through to Bismarck--a tedious journey in '76--and thither he followed. Thence the troops had gone by boat up the Missouri, and he took the first opportunity that came--and the next boat going up. At Fort Buford he ”sighted” his man, told his story to the commanding officer of the post, who sent for the officers of the troops with whom poor d.i.c.k was serving. They promptly a.s.serted that their first knowledge of him was on the Monday they reached St.
Paul, when a sergeant brought him to them, saying he begged to be allowed to enlist and go with them. He told a perfectly straight story; said he was an orphan, unmarried, had been a miller, but was tired of small wages, hard work, and no hopes of getting ahead, and had made up his mind to get into the regulars. Was at the railway station at midnight when the train was side-tracked to allow another to pa.s.s, and appealed to the sergeant of the guard to take him along; said he would pay his way until they could enlist him, and as he was a likely fellow they were glad to have him. He had won everybody's respect in the short time he was with them, and the whole command seemed thunderstruck to hear of the allegations against him.
The detective and his prisoner were put on a boat going back to Bismarck, and on that same boat, returning, wounded and furloughed, was a sergeant of the Seventh Cavalry--a gallant fellow who had fought under Benteen and McDougall on the bluffs of the Little Horn, after Custer's command had been surrounded and slaughtered four miles farther down stream. The sergeant kept to his room and bunk until they got to Bismarck, but the detectives had a chance to see and talk with him--and so had Graham.
It was an eventful day when the detective and his prisoner reached Nemahbin. The minister was there to meet him, as was Mr. Lowrie, and the entire male population of the neighborhood. There was no disorder or turbulence. d.i.c.k was quietly escorted to a room in the constable's house--they had no jail--and there that night he had a long conference with the minister and other prominent citizens. The minister drove home quite late--but very much later, along towards two in the morning, in fact, he was at the railway station and received in his buggy the single pa.s.senger who alighted from the night express.
Next day there was a gathering at the mayor's office--an apartment in the munic.i.p.al residence devoted to dining-room duty three times a day, and opening into the kitchen on the one hand, into the hallway on another, and into the village post-office on the third. Here sat Mr.
Lowrie, the doctor, the constable, other local celebrities, and one or two distinguished importations from Milwaukee. Here was the minister, looking singularly wide-awake, lively, and brisk for a man who had been up all night; here, too, sat the farm-hand who sent the cabalistic despatch when Frost went to Chicago, and the young man who heard the conversation down at the mill that Sunday night; here, too, sat d.i.c.k, looking pale but tranquil, and hither, too, presently came Mr. Frost, looking ghastly pale and very far from tranquil. d.i.c.k looked squarely at him as he entered, but Frost glanced rapidly about the room, eagerly nodding to one man after another, but avoiding d.i.c.k entirely. Then followed an impressive silence.
Outside, the August sun was streaming hotly down upon the heads of an intensely curious and interested throng; inside there was for the moment no sound but the humming of a thousand flies, or the nervous sc.r.a.ping of a boot over the uncarpeted floor. Then the mayor whispered a few words to the minister, who nodded to Mr. Morrow, the surviving brother, and then Mr. Morrow stepped into the hallway leading to the mayor's parlor, and presently reappeared at the doorway, and quietly said, ”All right.”
All eyes turned to glance at him at this moment, but, beyond his square, squat figure, nothing in the darkened hallway was visible. Then the mayor cleared his throat and began:
”By the consent of the proper authorities the prisoner, accused of the murder of the late Samuel Morrow, has been brought here instead of to the county town, for reasons that will appear hereafter. Graham, you have desired to hear the evidence of Mr. Frost, one of the princ.i.p.al witnesses against you at the time of the discovery of the murder. The clerk will now read it.”
<script>