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The Roof Tree, a fiction by Charles Neville Buck |
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Chapter 25 |
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_ CHAPTER XXV Had those enterprising spirits who had undertaken to organize a vigilance committee, modelled upon the old Ku Klux, been avowedly outlaws, banded together only for the abuse of power, their efforts would have died of inanition. The sort of lawlessness that has given the Appalachian mountaineer his wild name is one that the outer world understands as little as the hillsman understands the outer world, and the appeal which the organization made was a warped and distorted sense of justice, none the less sincere. So now though the organizers of the new body were scheming rascals, actuated by the basest and meanest motives, the tissue and brawn of their recruiting was built up from the adventure-love of youth or the grim and honest insurgency of maturer age. As yet the membership was small and it met in shifting places of rendezvous, with weird rites of oath-bound secrecy. To-night it was gathered around a campfire in a gorge between towering cliffs to which access was gained by a single and narrow gut of alley-way which was sentinel-guarded. The men were notably bi-partisan in make-up, for Sim Squires of the Harper faction sat on the same short log with young Pete Doane of the Rowletts, and so it ran with the rest. "Couldn't ye contrive ter persuade Bas Rowlett ter jine us, Pete?" inquired one of the two men who had swaggered with Sam Opdyke up the court-house aisle, and gone out in crestfallen limpness. "Hit looks like he'd ought ter hold with us. He war entitled ter leadership an' they cast him over." Pete shook his head and answered with the importance of an envoy: "Bas, he's fer us, body an' soul, an' he aims ter succour us every way he kin but he figgers he kin compass hit best fashion by _seemin'_ ter stand solid with ther old leaders." Sim Squires said nothing but he spat contemptuously when the name of Bas Rowlett was mentioned. "Ther fust task that lays ahead of us," declared the voice of Rick Joyce who seemed to be the presiding officer of the meeting, "is ter see that Sam Opdyke comes cl'ar in cote. When ther Doanes met in council, Sam war thar amongst 'em an' no man denied he hed as good a right ter be harkened to as anybody else. But they rid over him rough-shod. A few men tuck ther bit in their teeth and flaunted ther balance of us. Now we aims ter flaunt _them_ some." "How air we goin' ter compass hit?" came a query, and the answer was prompt. "When ther panel's drawed ter try Sam we've got ter see that every man on the jury gits secretly admonished thet atter he finishes up thar, he's still got ter answer ter _us_--an' meantime we've got ter handle some two-three offenders in sich a fashion thet men will fear ter disobey us." So working on that premise of injustices to be righted, malcontents from the minorities of both factions were induced with fantastic ceremonials of initiation into the membership of the secret brotherhood. And though they were building an engine of menacing power and outlawry, it is probable that more than half of them were men who might have turned on their leaders, as a wolf pack turns on a fallen member, had they known the deceit and the private grudge-serving with which the unseen hand of Bas Rowlett was guiding them. The dreamy languor of autumn gave way to the gusty melancholy of winds that brought down the leaves from the walnut tree until it stretched out branches disconsolate and reeking with only the more tenacious foliage left clinging. Then Dorothy Thornton felt that the sand was running low in the hour glass of respited happiness and that the day when her husband must face his issue was terribly near. Indian summer is a false glory and a brief one, with alluring beauty like the music of a swan-song, and it had been in an Indian summer of present possession that she had lived from day to day, refusing to contemplate the future--but that could not go on. The old journal which had fired her imagination as a door to a new life had lain through these days neglected--but they had been days of nearer and more urgent realities and, after all, the diary had seemed to belong to a world of dreams. One of these fall afternoons when the skies were lowering and Parish was out in the woods with Sim Squires she remembered it with a pang of guilty neglect such as one might feel for an ill-used friend, and went to the attic to take it out of its hiding and renew her acquaintance. But when she opened the old horsehide trunk it was not there and panic straightway seized her. If the yellowed document were lost, she felt that a guardian spirit had removed its talisman from the house, and since she was a practical soul, she remembered, too, that the note-release bearing Bas Rowlett's signature had been folded between its pages! With her present understanding of Bas that thought made her heart miss its beat. Dorothy was almost sure she had replaced it in the trunk after reading it the last time, yet she was not quite certain, and when Parish came back she was waiting for him with anxiety-brimming eyes. She told him with alarm in her face of the missing diary and of the receipt which had been enclosed and he looked grave, but rather with the air of sentimental than material interest. "Thet old diary-book was in ther chist not very long ago," he declared. "I went up thar an' got ther receipt out when I fared over ter Sam Opdyke's arraignin'. I tuck hit ter ther co'te-house an' put hit ter record thet day--ther receipt, I means." "How did ye git inter ther chist without my unlockin' hit?" she inquired with a relief much more material than sentimental, and he laughed. "Thet old brass key," he responded, "war in yore key basket--an ye warn't in ther house right then, so I jest holped myself." That brass key and that ancient record became the theme of conversation for two other people about the same time. In the abandoned cabin which had come to be the headquarters of Bas Rowlett in receiving reports from, and giving instructions to, his secret agents, he had a talk with his spy Sim Squires, who had come by appointment to meet him there. In the sick yellow of the lantern light the lieutenant had drawn from his pocket and handed to his chief the sheaf of paper roughly bound in home-made covers of cloth which he had been commissioned to abstract from its hiding place. "Hit's done tuck ye everlastin'ly ter git yore hands on this thing," commented Rowlett, sourly, as he held it, still unopened, before him. "But seems like ye've done got holt of hit at last." "Hit warn't no facile matter ter do," the agent defended himself as his face clouded resentfully. "Ef I let folks suspicion me I wouldn't be no manner of use ter ye in thet house." "How did ye compass hit finally?" "Thornton's woman always kep' hit in the old hoss-hair chist in ther attic an' she always kep' ther chist locked up tight as beeswax." Sim paused and grinned as he added, "But woman-fashion--she sometimes fergot ter lock up ther key." Rowlett was running through the pages whose ancient script was as meaningless to him as might have been a papyrus roll taken from the crypts of a pyramid. "Old Caleb," he mused, "named hit ter me thet he'd done put thet paper I wanted betwext ther leaves old this old book inside ther chist." He ran through the yellow pages time after time and finally shook them violently--without result. His face went blank, then anxious, and after that with a profane outcry of anger he flung the thing to the floor and wheeled with a livid face on Sim Squires. "Hit hain't thar!" he bellowed, and as his passion of fury and disappointment mounted, his eyes spurted jets of fury and suspicion. "Afore God," he burst out with eruptive volleys of abuse, "I halfway suspicions ye're holdin' thet paper yore own self ter barter an' trade on when ye gits ther chanst ... an' ef ye be, mebbe ye've got thet other document, too, thet ye pretends ye hain't nuver seed thar--ther one in ther sealed envellup!" He broke off suddenly, choked with his wrath and panting crazily. Suppose this hireling who had once or twice shown a rebellious disposition held his own signed confession! Suppose he had even read it! Bas had never suspected the real course which Parish Thornton had taken to safeguard that other paper and he had not understood why Sim had been unable to locate it and abstract it from the house. Thornton had, in fact, turned it over to the safekeeping of Jase Burrell, who was to hold it, in ignorance of its contents, and only to produce it under certain given conditions. Now Bas stood glaring at Sim Squires with eyes that burned like madness out of a face white and passion distorted, and Sim gave back a step, cringing before the man whose ungoverned fury he feared. But after an unbridled moment Bas realized that he was acting the muddle-headed fool in revealing his fear to a subordinate, his hold over whom depended on an unbroken pose of mastery and self-confidence. He drew back his shoulders and laughed shamefacedly. "I jest got red-headed mad fer a minute, Sim," he made placating avowal. "Of course I knows full well ye done ther best ye could; I reckon I affronted ye with them words, an' I craves yore pardon." But Sim, who had never served for love, found the collar of his slavery, just then, galling almost beyond endurance, and his eyes were sombrely resentful. "I reckon, Bas, ye'd better hire ye another man," he made churlish response. "I don't relish this hyar job overly much nohow.... Ye fo'ced me ter layway ther man ... but when ye comes ter makin' a common thief outen me, I'm ready ter quit." At this hint of insubordination Rowlett's anger came back upon him, but now instead of frothy self-betrayal it was cold and domineering. He leaned forward, gazing into the face upon which the lantern showed spots of high-light and traceries of deep shadow, and his voice was one of deliberate warning: "I counsels ye ter take sober thought, Sim, afore ye contraries me too fur. Ye says I compelled ye ter layway Parish Thornton--but ye kain't nuver prove thet--an' ef I hed ther power ter fo'ce ye then hit war because I knowed things erbout ye thet ye wouldn't love ter hev told. I knows them things still!" He paused to let that sink in, and Sim Squires stood breathing heavily. Every sense and fibre of his nature was in that revolt out of which servile rebellions are born. Every element of hate centred about his wish to see this arrogant master dead at his feet--but he acknowledged that the collar he wore was locked on his neck. So he schooled his face into something like composure and even nodded his head. "You got mad unduly, Bas," he said, "an' I reckon I done ther same. I says ergin ef ye hain't satisfied with ther way I've acted, I'm ready ter quit. If ye _air_ satisfied, all well an' good." Bas Rowlett picked up the diary of the revolutionary Dorothy Thornton and twisted it carelessly into a roll which he thrust out of sight between a plate-girder of the low cabin and its eaves. * * * * * Jerry Black came one Saturday night about that time to the wretched cabin where he and his wife, a brood of half-clothed children, two hound-dogs, three cats, and a pig dwelt together--and beat his wife. For years Jerry had been accustomed to doing precisely the same thing, not with such monotonous regularity as would have seemed to him excessive, but with periodical moderation. Between times he was a shiftless, indulgent, and somewhat henpecked little man of watery eyes, a mouth with several missing teeth, and a limp in one "sprung leg." But on semi-annual or quarterly occasions his lordliness of nature asserted itself in a drunken orgy. Then he went on a "high-lonesome" and whooped home with all the corked-up effervescence of weeks and months bubbling in his soul for expression. Then he proved his latent powers by knocking about the woman and the brattish crew, and if the whole truth must be told, none of those who felt the weight of his hand were totally undeserving of what they got. But on this occasion Jerry was all unwittingly permitting himself to become a pawn in a larger game of whose rules and etiquette he had no knowledge, and his domestic methods were no longer to pass uncensored in the privacy and sanctity of the home. His woman, seizing up the smallest and dirtiest of her offspring, fled shrieking bloody murder to the house of the nearest neighbour, followed by a procession of other urchins who added their shrill chorus to her predominant solo. When they found asylum and exhibited their bruises, they presented a summary of accusation which kindled resentment and while Jerry slept off his spree in uninterrupted calm this indignation spread and impaired his reputation. For just such a tangible call to arms the "riders," as they had come to be termed in the bated breath of terror, had been waiting. It was necessary that this organization should assert itself in the community in such vigorous fashion as would demonstrate its existence and seriousness of purpose. No offence save arson could make a more legitimate call upon a body of citizen regulators than that of wife-beating and the abuse of small children. So it came about that after the wife had forgiven her indignities and returned to her ascendency of henpecking, which was a more chronic if a less acute cruelty than that which she had suffered, a congregation of masked men knocked at the door and ordered the quaking Jerry to come forth and face civic indignation. He came because he had no choice, limping piteously on his sprung leg with his jaw hanging so that the missing teeth were abnormally conspicuous. Outside his door a single torch flared and back of its waver stood a semicircle of unrecognized avengers, coated in black slickers with hats turned low and masks upon their faces. They led him away into the darkness while more lustily than before, though for an opposite reason, the woman and the children shrieked and howled. Jerry trembled, but he bit into his lower lip and let himself be martyred without much whimpering. They stripped him in a lonely gorge two miles from his abode and tied him, face inward, to a sapling. They cow-hided him, then treated him to a light coat of tar and feathers and sent him home with most moral and solemn admonitions against future brutalities. There the victims of that harshness for which he had been "regulated" wept over him and swore that a better husband and father had never lived. But Jerry had suffered for an abstract idea rather than a concrete offence, and both Parish Thornton and Hump Doane recognized this fact when with sternly set faces they rode over and demanded that he give them such evidence as would lead to apprehension and conviction of the mob leaders. Black shivered afresh. He swore that he had recognized no face and no voice. They knew he lied yet blamed him little. To have given any information of real value would have been to serve the public and the law at too great a cost of danger to himself. But Parish Thornton rode back, later and alone, and by diplomatic suasion sought to sift the matter to its solution. "I didn't dast say nuthin' whilst Hump war hyar," faltered the first victim of the newly organized "riders," "an' hit's plum heedless ter tell ye anything now, but yit I did recognize one feller--because his mask drapped off." "I hain't seekin' ter fo'ce no co'te evidence outen ye now, Jerry," the young leader of the Thorntons assured him. "I'm only strivin' ter fethom this matter so's I'll know whar ter start work myself. Ye needn't be afeared ter trust me." "Wa'al, then, I'll tell ye." They were talking in the woods, where autumnal colour splashed its gorgeousness in a riot that intoxicated the eye, and no one was near them, but the man who had been tarred and feathered lowered his voice and spoke with a terrorized whine. "Thet feller I reecognized ... hit war old Hump Doane's own boy ... Pete Doane." Parish Thornton straightened up as though an electric current had been switched through his body. His face stiffened in amazement and the pain of sore perplexity. "Air ye plum onmistakably shore, Jerry?" he demanded and the little man nodded his head with energetic positiveness. "I reckon ye're wise not ter tell nobody else," commented Parish. "Hit would nigh kill old Hump ter larn hit. Jest leave ther matter ter me." _ |
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