XIX

THE MYTH

Jake's leadership had received a severe blow, and Bob could hardly believe that he would be able to muster a company again. But Hogan's vindictiveness and persistence rendered it probable that he would not rest in his present ridiculous position without making an effort to redeem himself, even if he had to act with a small party.

"You see," Bob explained to Mason that Sat.u.r.day night, "Jake's got the most p'ison kind uv hold-on you ever seed. He's sh.o.r.e to try't over, fust _or_ last."

"He won't let you fool him again," said Mason.

Bob smiled and picked up a chip, which he began to whittle as an aid to reflection.

"It would be a juberous thing to try again. But I'm goin' to see Pete Markham in the mornin'. He'll go apast h-yer to the camp-meetin', fer he's a Methodis' by marriage,--that is, his wife's a member, un that makes Pete feel 'z if he wuz a kind-uv a member-in-law. Un Pete knows mighty well 't when the time comes roun' fer him to run fer office, it'll be worth while to know p.u.s.s.idin' elders, un circus-riders, un locus' preachers, un exhausters, un all sorts uv camp-meetin' people.

Pete's jes' as sh.o.r.e to go to camp-meetin' a Sunday mornin' 'z a bear is to eat honey when he comes acrost a tumble-down bee-tree."

The next morning Bob stood in his shirt-sleeves leaning over Mrs.

Grayson's gate and watching the people that rode to the great Sunday a.s.sembly at the Union camp-ground. Many a staid plow-horse, with collar-marks on his shoulders, had been diligently curried and brushed to transform him into a stylish saddle-nag; and many a young man, with hands calloused by ax-helve and plow-handle, rode to-day in his Sunday best with a blooming girl by his side, or behind him, and with the gay heart of a troubadour in his breast. Fresh calico dresses, in which the dominant tint was either a bright pink or a positive blue, were flaunted with more pride than a princess feels in her lace and pearls. The woman who has worked and schemed and skimped to achieve her attire knows the real pleasure and victory of self-adornment.

The early comers of this Sunday-morning procession are, in the main, Methodists going to eat bread and water with the brethren in the 9 o'clock love-feast a.s.sembly, to sing together the touching songs of fellowship, and to tell, and to hear told, the stories of personal trials and sorrows,--to taste the pleasure of being one of a great company wrought to ecstasy by a common religious pa.s.sion. But as the summer sun mounts higher, the road is more and more thronged with a miscellaneous company. For at 11 o'clock the presiding elder, a great man of all the country round, will preach one of his favorite sermons, and all the world--believers and scoffers, doctors and lawyers, and judges and politicians--will be there to hear him marshal in new forms the oft-repeated arguments in favor of the divine origin of Christianity, or the truth of the Arminian system of Wesley, and to admire the dramatic effect of his well-told anecdotes and the masterly pathos of his peroration. The people no longer go in couples; there are six and even ten in a group. And how well they sit their saddles! There is no "rising to the trot," in the ungraceful fashion of New York and Boston gentlemen and ladies who have put away the tradition of ancestors of unrivaled horsemanship, to adopt from England an ugly custom excusable only in a land of fox-hunting. You might find girls in their teens in this company who ride with grace and dash over difficult roads, and who could learn nothing worth their while from a riding-master,--for to ride perfectly consists chiefly in riding as naturally and unconsciously as one walks, and that is rarely given to any but those that are to the saddle born. But besides saddle-horses there are wagons, for wherever there is a prairie, wheels come early. One or two families not yet out of a pioneer state of existence go creaking painfully along in ox-carts; and there are barefoot boys skurrying afoot across fields to save distance. Everybody feels bound to go. The attraction of a crowd is proportioned to its greatness, like all other gravitation, and this one will drain the country dry of people. Scarcely any one stays at home, as you see. There are little children in the wagons and on the croups of the saddle-horses, while some supernumerary ones are held in place on the withers; it is in this way that the babies get their first lessons in horsemanship. At half-past 10 o'clock the roads are beclouded with dust that drifts to leeward, turning the green blades of the corn-field to gray and grizzling the foliage of the trees. All along the road there is the sound of voices in many keys--but all with a touch of holiday buoyancy in them. There is that universal interchange of good feeling which is only found in communities that have no lines of social cleavage. Everybody is talking to everybody,--about the weather, the crops, the latest weddings, the most recent deaths, and, above all, the murder at the camp-meeting. To this topic every party drifts when the Grayson farm-house comes in sight, if not before. Wild stories are repeated of Tom's profligacy, and of the causes that led to the feud between him and Lockwood. As the people come nearer to the house their voices fall into a lower tone, and they ride by the front gate in almost entire silence, scanning the house with eager curiosity, as though trying to penetrate the chagrin of those within. They all nod to Bob; it is the common and indispensable civility of the country. Bob nods to all in turn and grunts in a friendly way at those with whom he is acquainted; but to his best friends he gives a cheerful "Howdy!"

At length the deputy sheriff, Markham, appears, riding alongside of his wife. She is also escorted on the other side by Magill, the county clerk, who is saying the pleasantest things he can think of to her. When Markham arrives at a point nearly opposite the gate, Bob does not nod, but gives his head a significant jerk backward and to the left,--a laconic invitation to stop a moment, rendered the more explicit by the utterance in a low tone of a single word, "Pete!" Markham draws rein and stops to hear what Bob has to say; and Mason, who has come out on the porch at that moment, descends to the gate to talk with Magill and Mrs.

Markham, who have also pulled up. The whole five are presently engaged in conversation in one group, while the horses amuse themselves by thrusting their dusty noses through the cracks of the fence to nibble at such blades of gra.s.s as are within their reach. The sight of the deputy sheriff and the county clerk in front of the Grayson house piques yet more the curiosity of the pa.s.sers-by, who wonder what those privileged folks can be talking about.

"You cannot do that," Markham said presently, in reply to a suggestion that came from Mason. "It's no use talking to the sheriff about moving Tom to Perrysburg. He's made up his mind not to move him; and if he did move him, Perrysburg wouldn't be a safe place."

"The shairiff seems to have one eye on Broad Run, ainh Pate?" said Magill chaffingly.

But Pete Markham neither smiled nor said anything in reply.

"It's a shame something can't be done for Tom," said Mason. "He's got a right to a fair trial; and we think he's innocent."

"I'll do anything I can," said Markham, whose memory had been haunted by the appealing face of Mrs. Grayson ever since his domiciliary visit in search of Tom's pistol.

"I'm not caring much whether he's innocent or not, meself," said Magill.

"May be Lockwood aggravated 'im an' naded puttin' out of the way. All I say is, Tom faced that crowd the other day like a man, an' he's a born gintleman in me own istimation; an' I'd niver let a gintleman be hung by a gang of blackguards, if I could help it."

"Broad Run don't vote for you, Magill," said Markham.

"You wouldn't ixpict it to vote for a man with a clane shirt on, now would ye?"

"Well," said Bob, "I've been a-thinkin' that ef Pete could make people b'lieve that they wuz another man wanted fer the shootin', it would sort uh muddle Jake's plans fer a while, un by that time liker'n not Abe Lincoln'll find out who the rale murderer is."

"Tell me what's the color of his hair, Pate?" said Magill. "Then I'll help you foind him."

"Well," drawled Markham, turning a little sidewise in the saddle to rest himself, and looking perfectly serious and secretive, "I haven't found out about his hair,--he wore a straw hat, you know. But he was a youngish fellow, with foxy whiskers under his chin."

"Middlin' small?" suggested Magill, with a faint pucker of drollery about the corner of his mouth.

"Yes," said Markham, biting the b.u.t.t of his beech switch meditatively.

"Ruther under the average, I should say, without being small."

"One eye a leetle crossed?" Bob McCord inquired, laughing.

"Right eye a little _out_," said Markham, waving his hand outwardly. "He had quarreled with Lockwood a good while ago and owed him a grudge.

That's the man."

"Know his name?" put in Magill.

"N-o. That's one thing we're trying to find out. He come from off East where Lockwood used to live. We've got to try to find if anybody knows which way he went when he left the camp-meetin' that night, and if anybody can tell just where he come from."

"Oh! I understand now what you're after," said Magill. "There'll be a plinty will remimber the man when you come to spake about him. Don't you say what you want him fer. L'ave all explinations to me. I'm not responsible, an' I'll let out the saycrits of the shairiff's office."

The pa.s.sers-by had grown visibly fewer in the last few minutes, and now the belated ones rode for the most part in a rapid trot or a gallop.

Mrs. Markham began to warn her husband that there would not be a seat left; so the horses' heads were drawn up, and the trio set forward with a nod of good-bye to Bob and the schoolmaster.

Markham went to work in all seriousness to get information about the imaginary young man with red whiskers under his chin and an outward cast in one eye who had been seen on the ground the night of the murder.

Magill took occasion to remark that if the praycher 'd only 'a' known what Markham was looking for, and all about the rale facts of the murder, he mightn't have held Tom up for an awful warnin' to the young that mornin'. But he supposed it did not matter whether you had the roight fellow or the wrong one, if you were only praychin'. Some of those who heard the clerk describe the smallish man with the red goatee and one eye _out_ a little, thought they could remember having seen a man answering to this description; but as they could not give any information tending to secure his arrest, Magill did not think it worth while communicating their knowledge to Markham. But he quoted their sayings and surmises to the next persons he spoke to; so that, without ever straining his conscience to the point of positively a.s.serting the substantive existence of such a red-whiskered young man with a squint, he had almost come to believe in him by the time the day was over.

The story reached Broad Run in two or three forms before night, and served to throw Jake's forlorn hope into confusion. But Magill did not think best to leave the Broad Run people to the mercy of rumor in so important a matter. He rode up to the grocery about half-past 5 in the afternoon, and having hitched his horse to a neighboring dogwood, he walked in with a good-evening to the group at the door. Going up to the counter he called up the whole party to drink with him, as became an Irish gentleman of generous spirit, who was, moreover, a prudent politician. But Broad Run had never taken a fancy to Magill; there was a ceremoniousness about his attempts to flatter them which did not harmonize with their rough-and-ready ways. If he had said, "Come, boys, liquor up!" they would have thought his manner perfect; but he bowed blandly to Jake Hogan, and said, "Have something to drink, won't you?"

and so to the rest. They mentally condemned him as "too all-fired fine in his ways and too much dressed up for a free country." But they did not neglect the opportunity to drink at somebody else's expense. Jake Hogan was the more ready to accept such hospitality because he had been feeling a little depressed since his unlucky trip to Perrysburg. And now this story which he had heard of another man who might be the murderer had destroyed what chance he had of mustering a party for Moscow; for Jake's most devoted partisans did not like to run any risk of hanging the wrong man.

"Mr. Magill," said Jake, after he had turned his whisky-gla.s.s nearly to the perpendicular in the endeavor to extract the last drop, "what's this yer story about Tom's not being the ginooine murderer? I don't take no stock in the yarn, fer my part."

"Well, it ain't best to say anything about it till they get the other man," said Magill, a.s.suming a close look. "I hear they're purty hot on his track."

"What kind of a lookin' creetur wuzzy?" asked Bijy Grimes, an oldish man with an effeminate chin and soft, fair cheeks which contrasted strangely with his slovenly and unkempt appearance. Bijy had drunk his liquor, and now sat resting on a keg with his mouth dropped wide open; it was a way he had of listening.

"Well, I don't know anything only what I hear," said Magill. "I'm not the shairiff, you know. The story goes that he was a man with a red goatee--"

"Un what fer sized man?" asked Bijy.

"Rather under-sized, and with one eye a little walled," said Magill.

"I'm darned ef 't ain't the wery man I seed," said Bijy, who never failed to know something about everything. "He wuz comin' towurds the camp-meetin' that wery arternoon. Dern!" and he shut his mouth, and got to his feet in excitement. "I kind-uh suspicioned 'im too," he added.

"Well, I don't know anything," said the clerk; "but if they catch that stranger and prove it on him,--mind, I say, if they _prove_ it,--count me for one that will help get the world rid of him by Broad Run law, as they call it. But I've got to get on home, gintlemen. Good-bye, gintlemen, and good luck to you all!" So saying, Magill bowed respectfully.

The rest nodded their heads and said good-bye.

"He's too orful slick," said Jake, when Magill had gone. "Makes me kind uv sick. Now I like a man ut talks out like a man, you know; without so much dodrotted saf-sawder, un so on. He ain't none uh my kind, Magill hain't."

XX