The Bondboy Read online

  Frost was of the same opinion. He had no stomach for prying around dead men, anyhow.

  “We’ll leave him lay, Sol,” said he.

  “And it’s my opinion that you orto put handcuffs on that feller,” said Sol.

  “Which feller?” asked Bill.

  “That boy Joe,” said Sol.

  “Well, I ain’t got any, and I wouldn’t put ’em on him if I had,” said Bill. “He told me all about how it happened when we was comin’ over. Why, you don’t suspiciont he done it, do you, Sol?”

  “Circumstantial evidence,” said Sol, fresh from jury service and full of the law, “is dead ag’in’ him, Bill. If I was you I’d slap him under arrest. They had words, you know.”

  “Yes; he told me they did,” said Bill.

  “But he didn’t tell you what them words was about,” said Sol deeply.

  The constable turned to Sol, the shaft of suspicion working its way through the small door of his mind.

  “By ganny!” said he.

  “I’d take him up and hand him over to the sheriff in the morning,” advised Sol.

  “I reckon I better do it,” Frost agreed, almost knocked breathless by the importance of the thing he had overlooked.

  So they laid their heads together to come to a proper method of procedure, and presently they marched around the corner of the house, shoulder to shoulder, as if prepared to intercept and overwhelm Joe if he tried to make a dash for liberty.

  They had left Joe sitting on the steps with Dan, and now they hurried around as if they expected to find his place empty and Dan stretched out, mangled and bleeding. But Joe was still there, in friendly conversation with Dan, showing no intention of running away. Frost advanced and laid his hand on Joe’s shoulder.

  “Joe Newbolt,” said he, “I put you under arrest on the suspiciont of shootin’ and murderin’ Isom Chase in cold blood.”

  It was a formula contrived between the constable and Sol. Sol had insisted on the “cold blood.” That was important and necessary, he declared. Omit that in making the arrest, and you had no case. It would fall through.

  Joe stood up, placing himself at the immediate disposal of the constable, which was rather embarrassing to Bill.

  “Well, Bill, if you think it’s necessary, all right,” said he.

  “Form of law demands it,” said Sol.

  “But you might wait and see what the coroner thinks about it,” suggested Joe.

  “Perliminaries,” said Greening in his deep way.

  Then the question of what to do with the prisoner until morning arose. Joe pointed out that they could make no disposition of him, except to hold him in custody, until the coroner had held an inquest into the case and a conclusion had been reached by the jury. He suggested that they allow him to go to bed and get some needed sleep.

  That seemed to be a very sensible suggestion, according to Bill’s view of it. But Sol didn’t know whether it would be a regular proceeding and in strict accord with the forms of law. Indeed, he was of the opinion, after deliberating a while, that it would weaken the case materially. He was strongly in favor of handcuffs, or, in the absence of regulation manacles, a half-inch rope.

  After a great deal of discussion, during which Frost kept his hand officiously on Joe’s shoulder, it was agreed that the prisoner should be allowed to go to bed. He was to be lodged in the spare room upstairs, the one lately occupied by Morgan. Frost escorted him to it, and locked the door.

  “Is they erry winder in that room?” asked Sol, when Bill came back.

  “Reckon so,” said Frost, starting nervously. “I didn’t look.”

  “Better see,” said Sol, getting up to investigate.

  They went round to the side of the house. Yes, there was a window, and it was wide open.

  But any doubt that the prisoner might have escaped through it was soon quieted by the sound of his snore. Joe had thrown himself across the bed, boots and all, and was already shoulder-deep in sleep. They decided that, at daylight, Sol’s son should ride to the county-seat, seven miles distant, and notify the coroner.

  During the time they spent between Joe’s retirement and daybreak, Sol improved the minutes by arraigning, convicting, and condemning Joe for the murder of old Isom. He did it so impressively that he had Constable Frost on edge over the tremendous responsibility that rested on his back. Bill was in a sweat, although the night was cool. He tiptoed around, listening, spying, prying; he stood looking up at Joe’s window until his neck ached; he explored the yard for hidden weapons and treasure, and he peered and poked with a rake-handle into shrubbery and vines.

  They could hear the women upstairs talking once in a while, and now and again they caught the sound of a piteous moan.

  “She ain’t seen him,” said Sol; “I wouldn’t let her come down. She may not be in no condition to look on a muss like that, her a young woman and only married a little while.”

  Bill agreed on that, as he agreed on every hypothesis which Sol propounded out of his wisdom, now that his official heat had been raised.

  “If I hadn’t got here when I did he’d ’a’ skinned out with all of that money,” said Sol. “He was standin’ there with his hat in his hand, all ready to scoop it up.”

  “How’d he come to go after me?” asked Bill.

  “Well, folks don’t always do things on their own accord,” said Sol, giving Bill an unmistakable look.

  “Oh, that was the way of it,” nodded Bill. “I thought it was funny if he––”

  “He knowed he didn’t have a ghost of a chance to git away between me and you,” said Sol.

  Morning came, and with it rode Sol’s son to fetch the coroner.

  Sol had established himself in the case so that he would lose very little glory in the day’s revelations, and there remained one pleasant duty yet which he proposed to take upon himself. That was nothing less than carrying the news of the tragedy and Joe’s arrest to Mrs. Newbolt in her lonely home at the foot of the hill.

  Sol’s son spread the news as he rode through the thin morning to the county-seat, drawing up at barn-yard gates, hailing the neighbors on the way to their fields, pouring the amazing story into the avid ears of all who met him. Sol carried the story in the opposite direction, trotting his horse along full of leisurely importance and the enjoyment of the distinction which had fallen on him through his early connection with the strange event. When they heard it, men turned back from their fields and hastened to the Chase farm, to peer through the kitchen window and shock their toil-blunted senses in the horror of the scene.

  Curiosity is stronger than thrift in most men, and those of that community were no better fortified against it than others of their kind. Long before Sol Greening’s great lubberly son reached the county-seat, a crowd had gathered at the farmstead of Isom Chase. Bill Frost, now bristling with the dignity of his official power, moved among them soberly, the object of great respect as the living, moving embodiment of the law.

  Yesterday he was only Bill Frost, a tenant of rented land, filling an office that was only a name; this morning he was Constable Bill Frost, with the power and dignity of the State of Missouri behind him, guarding a house of mystery and death. Law and authority had transformed him overnight, settling upon him as the spirit used to come upon the prophets in the good old days.

  Bill had only to stretch out his arm, and strong men would fall back, pale and awed, away from the wall of the house; he had but to caution them in a low word to keep hands off everything, to be instantly obeyed. They drew away into the yard and stood in low-voiced groups, the process of thought momentarily stunned by this terrible thing.

  “Ain’t it awful?” a graybeard would whisper to a stripling youth.

  “Ain’t it terrible?” would come the reply.

  “Well, well, well! Old Isom!”

  That was as far as any of them could go. Then they would walk softly, scarcely breathing, to the window and peep in again.

  Joe, unhailed and undisturbed, was spinnin
g out his sleep. Mrs. Greening brought coffee and refreshments for the young widow from her own kitchen across the road, and the sun rose and drove the mists out of the hollows, as a shepherd drives his flocks out to graze upon the hill.

  As Sol Greening hitched his horse to the Widow Newbolt’s fence, he heard her singing with long-drawn quavers and lingering semibreves:

  There is a fountain filled with blood,

  Drawn from Immanuel’s veins....

  She appeared at the kitchen door, a pan in her hand, a flock of expectant chickens craning their necks to see what she had to offer, at the instant that Sol came around the corner of the house. She all but let the pan fall in her amazement, and the song was cut off between her lips in the middle of a word, for it was not more than six o’clock, uncommonly early for visitors.

  “Mercy me, Sol Greening, you give me an awful jump!” said she.

  “Well, I didn’t aim to,” said Sol, turning over in his mind the speech that he had drawn up in the last uninterrupted stage of his journey over.

  Mrs. Newbolt looked at him sharply, turning her head a little with a quick, pert movement, not unlike one of her hens.

  “Is anybody sick over your way?” she asked.

  She could not account for the early visit in any other manner. People commonly came for her at all hours of the day and night when there was somebody sick and in need of a herb-wise nurse. She had helped a great many of the young ones of that community into the world, and she had eased the pains of many old ones who were quitting it. So she thought that Greening’s visit must have something to do with either life or death.

  “No, nobody just azackly sick,” dodged Greening.

  “Well, laws my soul, you make a mighty mystery over it! What’s the matter–can’t you talk?”

  “But I can’t say, Missis Newbolt, that everybody’s just azackly well,” said he.

  “Some of your folks?”

  “No, not none of mine,” said Sol.

  “Then whose?” she inquired impatiently.

  “Isom’s,” said he.

  “You don’t mean my Joe?” she asked slowly, a shadow of pain drawing her face.

  “I mean Isom,” said Sol.

  “Isom?” said she, relieved. “Why didn’t Joe come after me?” Before Sol could adjust his program to meet this unexpected exigency, she demanded: “Well, what’s the matter with Isom?”

  “Dead,” said Sol, dropping his voice impressively.

  “You don’t mean–well, shades of mercy, Isom dead! What was it–cholera-morbus?”

  “Killed,” said Sol; “shot down with his own gun and killed as dead as a dornix.”

  “His own gun! Well, sakes–who done it?”

  “Only one man knows,” said Sol, shaking his head solemnly. “I’ll tell you how it was.”

  Sol started away back at the summons to jury service, worked up to the case in which he and Isom had sat together, followed Isom then along the road home, and galloped to overtake him. He arrived at his gate–all in his long and complete narrative–again, as he had done in reality the night past; he heard the shot in Isom’s house; he leaped to the ground; he ran. He saw a light in the kitchen of Isom’s house, but the door was closed; he knocked, and somebody called to him to enter. He opened the door and saw Isom lying there, still and bloody, money–gold money–all over him, and a man standing there beside him. There was nobody else in the room.

  “Shades of mercy!” she gasped. “Who was that man?”

  Sol looked at her pityingly. He put his hand to his forehead as if it gave him pain to speak.

  “It was your Joe,” said he.

  She sighed, greatly lightened and relieved.

  “Oh, then Joe he told you how it happened?” said she.

  “Ma’am,” said Sol impressively, “he said they was alone in the kitchen when it happened; he said him and Isom had some words, and Isom he reached up to pull down the gun, and the hammer caught, and it went off and shot him. That’s what Joe told me, ma’am.”

  “Well, Sol Greening, you talk like you didn’t believe him!” she scorned. “If Joe said that, it’s so.”

  “I hope to God it is!” said Sol, drawing a great breath.

  If Sol had looked for tears, his eyes were cheated; if he had listened for screams, wailings, and moanings, his ears were disappointed. Sarah Newbolt stood straight and haughtily scornful in her kitchen door, her dark eyes bright between their snapping lids.

  “Where’s Joe?” she asked sternly.

  “He’s over there,” said Sol, feeling that he had made a noise like a peanut-bag which one inflates and smashes in the palm in the expectation of startling the world.

  “Have they took him up?”

  “Well, you see, Bill Frost’s kind of keepin’ his eye on him till the inquest,” explained Sol.

  “Yes, and I could name the man that put him up to it,” said she.

  “Well, circumstantial evidence–” began Sol.

  “Oh, circumstance your granny!” she stopped him pettishly.

  Mrs. Newbolt emptied her pan among the scrambling fowls by turning it suddenly upside down. That done, she reached behind her and put it on the table. Her face had grown hard and severe, and her eyes were fierce.

  “Wouldn’t believe my boy!” said she bitterly. “Are you going over that way now?”

  “Guess I’ll be ridin’ along over.”

  “Well, you tell Joe that I’ll be there as quick as shank’s horses can carry me,” she said, turning away from the door, leaving Sol to gather what pleasure he was able out of the situation.

  She lost no time in primping and preparing, but was on the road before Sol had gone a quarter of a mile.

  Mrs. Newbolt cut across fields, arriving at the Chase farm almost as soon as Sol Greening did on his strawberry roan. The coroner had not come when she got there; Bill Frost allowed Joe to come down to the unused parlor of old Isom’s house to talk with her. Frost showed a disposition to linger within the room and hear what was said, but she pushed him out.

  “I’ll not let him run off, Bill Frost,” said she. “If he’d wanted to run, if he’d had anything to run from, he could ’a’ gone last night, couldn’t he, you dunce?”

  She closed the door, and no word of what passed between mother and son reached the outside of it, although Bill Frost strained his ear against it, listening.

  When the coroner arrived in the middle of the forenoon he found no difficulty in obtaining a jury to inquire into Isom’s death. The major and minor male inhabitants of the entire neighborhood were assembled there, every qualified man of them itching to sit on the jury. As the coroner had need of but six, and these being soon chosen, the others had no further pleasure to look forward to save the inquiry into the tragedy.

  After examining the wound which caused Isom’s death, the coroner had ordered the body removed from the kitchen floor. The lamp was still burning on the table, and the coroner blew it out; the gold lay scattered on the floor where it had fallen, and he gathered it up and put it in the little sack.

  When the coroner went to the parlor to convene the inquest, the crowd packed after him. Those who were not able to get into the room clustered in a bunch at the door, and protruded themselves in at the windows, silent and expectant.

  Joe sat with his mother on one hand, Constable Frost on the other, and across the room was Ollie, wedged between fat Mrs. Sol Greening and her bony daughter-in-law, who claimed the office of ministrants on the ground of priority above all the gasping, sympathetic, and exclaiming females who had arrived after them.

  Ollie was pale and exhausted in appearance, her face drawn and bloodless, like that of one who wakes out of an anesthetic after a surgical operation upon some vital part. Her eyes were hollowed, her nostrils pinched, but there was no trace of tears upon her cheeks. The neighbors said it was dry grief, the deepest and most lasting that racks the human heart. They pitied her, so young and fair, so crushed and bowed under that sudden, dark sorrow.

 
Mrs. Greening had thrown something black over the young widow’s shoulders, of which she seemed unaware. It kept slipping and falling down, revealing her white dress, and Mrs. Greening kept adjusting it with motherly hand. Sitting bent, like an old woman, Ollie twisted and wound her nervous hot fingers in her lap. Now and then she lifted her eyes to Joe’s, as if struggling to read what intention lay behind the pale calm of his face.

  No wonder she looked at him wild and fearful, people said. It was more than anybody could understand, that sudden development of fierce passion and treachery in a boy who always had been so shy and steady. No wonder she gazed at him that way, poor thing!

  Of course they did not dream how far they were from interpreting that look in the young widow’s eyes. There was one question in her life that morning, and one only, it seemed. It stood in front of the future and blocked all thought of it like a heavy door. Over and over it revolved in her mind. It was written in fire in her aching brain.

  When they put Joe Newbolt on the witness-stand and asked him how it happened, would he stand true to his first intention and protect her, or would he betray it all?

  That was what troubled Ollie. She did not know, and in his face there was no answer.

  Sol Greening was the first witness. He told again to the jury of his neighbors the story which he had gone over a score of times that morning. Mrs. Newbolt nodded when he related what Joe had told him, as if to say there was no doubt about that; Joe had told her the same thing. It was true.

  The coroner, a quick, sharp little man with a beard of unnatural blackness, thick eyebrows and sleek hair, helped him along with a question now and then.

  “There was nobody in the room but Joe Newbolt when you arrived?”

  “Nobody else–no livin’ body,” replied Sol.

  “No other living body. And Joe Newbolt was standing beside the body of Isom Chase, near the head, you say?”

  “Yes, near Isom’s head.”

  “With his hat in his hand, as if he had just entered the room, or was about to leave it?”