The Bishop of Cottontown Part 93

"_Kill Conway! Kill the man who murdered our people!_"

In ten minutes they were ready to attack again, but looking up they saw a strange sight.

Help had come to Conway. On one side of him stood the old Cottontown preacher, his white hair reflecting back the light from the bonfires and torches in front--lighting up a face which now seemed to have lost all of its kindly humor in the crisis that was there. He was unarmed, but he stood calm and with a courage that was more of sorrow than of anger.

By him stood the village blacksmith, a man with the wild light of an old, untamed joy gleaming in his eyes--a cruel, dangerous light--the eyes of a caged tiger turned loose at last, and yearning for the blood of the thing which had caged him.

And by him in quiet bravery, commanding, directing, stood the tall figure of the Captain of Artillery.

When Richard Travis saw him, a cruel smile deepened in his eyes. "I am dying myself," it said--"why not kill him?"

Then he shuddered with the hatred of the terrible thing that had come into his heart--the thing that made him do its bidding, as if he were a puppet, and overthrew all the good he had gathered there, that terrible night, as the angels were driven from Paradise. And yet, how it ruled him, how it drove him on!

"Jim--Jim," he whispered as he bent over his horse's neck--"Jim--my repeating rifle over the library door--quick--it carries true and far!"

As Jim sped away his master was silent again. He thought of the n.o.bility of the things he had done that night--the touch of G.o.d that had come over him in making him save Helen--the beautiful dreams he had had. He thought of it all--and then--here--now--murdering the man whose life carried with it the life, the love of--

He looked up at the stars, and the old wonder and doubt came back to him--the old doubt which made him say to himself: "It is nothing--it is the end. Dust thou art, and unto dust--dust--dust--dust--" he bit his tongue to keep from saying it again--"Dust--to be blown away and mingle with the elements--dust! And yet, I stand here--now--blood--flesh--a thinking man--tempted--terribly--cruelly--poignantly--dying--of a poison in my veins--of sorrow in my heart--sorrow and death. Who would not take the dust--gladly take it--the dust and the--forgetting."

He remembered and repeated:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar--"

"'And cometh from afar,'" he whispered--"My G.o.d--suppose it does--and that I am mistaken in it all?--Dust--and then maybe something after dust."

With his rifle in his hand, it all vanished and he began to train it on the tall figure while the mob prepared to storm the jail again--and his shot would be the signal--this time in desperate determination to take it or die.

In the mob near Richard Travis stood a boy, careless and cool, and holding in his hand an old pistol. Richard Travis noticed the boy because he felt that the boy's eyes were always on him--always. When he looked down into them he was touched and sighed, and a dream of the long-ago swept over him--of a mountain cabin and a maiden fair to look upon. He bit his lip to keep back the tenderness--bit his lip and rode away--out of reach of the boy's eyes.

But the boy, watching him, knew, and he said in his quiet, revengeful way: "Twice have I failed to kill you--but to-night--my Honorable father--to-night in the death that will be here, I shall put this bullet through your heart."

Travis turned to the mob: "Men, when I fire this rifle--it will mean for you to charge!"

A hush fell over the crowd as they watched him. He looked at his rifle closely. He sprang the breech and threw out a sh.e.l.l or two to see that it worked properly.

"Stay where you are, men," came that same voice they had heard so plainly before that night. "We are now four and well armed and sworn to uphold the law and protect the prisoner, and if you cross the dead line you will die."

There was a silence, and then that old voice again, the voice that roused the mob to fury:

"I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, I can tarry--I can tarry but a night--"

"Lead us on--give the signal, Richard Travis," they shouted.

Again the silence fell as Richard Travis raised his rifle and aimed at the tall figure outlined closely and with magnified distinctness in the glare of bonfire and torch. How splendidly cool and brave he looked--that tall figure standing there, giving orders as calmly as he gave them at Shiloh and Franklin, and so forgetful of himself and his own safety!

Richard Travis brought his rifle down--it shook so--brought it down saying to himself with a nervous laugh: "It is not Tom--not Tom Travis I am going to kill--it's--it's Alice's husband of only two days--her lover--"

"Shoot! Why don't you shoot?" they shouted. "We are waiting to rush--"

Even where he stood, Richard Travis could see the old calm, quiet and now triumphant smile lighting up Tom Travis's face, and he knew he was thinking of Alice--Alice, his bride.

And then that same nervous, uncanny chill ran into the very marrow of Richard Travis and brought his gun down with an oath on his lips as he said pitifully--"I am poisoned--it is that!"

The crowd shouted and urged him to shoot, but he sat shaking to his very soul. And when it pa.s.sed there came the old half humorous, half bitter, cynical laugh as he said: "Alice--Alice a widow--"

It pa.s.sed, and again there leaped into his eyes the great light Jud Carpenter had seen there that morning, and slipping the cartridges out of the barrel's breech, he looked up peacefully with the halo of a holy light around his eyes as he said: "Oh, G.o.d, and I thank Thee--for this--this touch again! Hold the little spark in my heart--hold it, oh, G.o.d, but for a little while till the temptation is gone, and I shall rest--I shall rest."

"Shoot--Richard Travis--why the devil don't you shoot?" they shouted.

He raised his rifle again, this time with a flourish which made some of the mob think he was taking unnecessary risk to attract the attention of the grim blacksmith who stood, pistol in hand, his piercing eyes scanning the crowd. He stood by the side of Tom Travis, his bodyguard to the last.

"Jack--Jack--" kept whispering to him the old preacher, "don't shoot till you're obleeged to,--maybe G.o.d'll open a way, maybe you won't have to spill blood. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord."

Jack smiled. It was a strange smile--of joy, in the risking glory of the old life--the glory of blood-letting, of killing, of death. And sorrow--sorrow in the new.

"Stand pat, stand pat, Bishop," he said; "you all know the trade. Let me who have defied the law so long, let me now stand for it--die for it. It's my atonement--ain't that the word? Ain't that what you said about that there Jesus Christ, the man you said wouldn't flicker even on the Cross, an' wouldn't let us flicker if we loved Him--Hol' him to His promise, now, Bishop. It's time for us to stand pat. No--I'll not shoot unless I see some on 'em makin' a too hasty movement of gun-arm toward Cap'n--"

Had Richard Travis looked from his horse down into the crowd he had seen another sight. Man can think and do but one thing at a time, but oh, the myrmidons of G.o.d's legions of Cause and Effect!

Below him stood a boy, his face white in the terrible tragedy of his determination. And as Richard Travis threw up his empty rifle, the octagonal barrel of the pistol in the boy's hand leaped up and came straight to the line of Richard Travis's heart. But before the boy could fire Travis saw the hawk-like flutter of the blacksmith's pistol arm, as it measured the distance with the old quick training of a b.l.o.o.d.y experience, and Richard Travis smiled, as he saw the flash from the outlaw's pistol and felt that uncanny chill starting in his marrow again, leap into a white heat to the shock of the ball, and he pitched limply forward, slipped from his horse and went down on the ground murmuring, "Tom--Tom--safe, and Alice--he shot at last--and--thank G.o.d for the touch again!"

He lay quiet, feeling the life blood go out of him. But with it came an exhalation he had never felt before--a glory that, instead of taking, seemed to give him life.

The mob rushed wildly at the jail at the flash of Jack Bracken's pistol, all but one, a boy--whose old dueling pistol still pointed at the s.p.a.ce in the air, where Richard Travis had sat a moment before--its holder nerveless--rigid--as if turned into stone.

He saw Richard Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a helpless, pitiful way,--then lie down as if it were sweet to rest.

And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid, numbed--pointing at the stars.

Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: "Stand back--all; Me--me alone, shoot--me! I who have so often killed the law, let me die for it."

And then came to the boy's ears the terrible staccato cough of the two Colts pistols whose very fire he had learned to know so well. And he knew that the blacksmith alone was shooting--the blacksmith he loved so--the marksman he worshipped--the man who had saved his life--the man who had just shot his father.

Richard Travis sat up with an effort and looked at the boy standing by him--looked at him with frank, kindly eyes,--eyes which begged forgiveness, and the boy saw himself there--in Richard Travis, and felt a hurtful, pitying sorrow for him, and then an uncontrolled, hot anger at the man who had shot him out of the saddle. His eyes twitched wildly, his heart jumped in smothering beats, a dry sob choked him, and he sprang forward crying: "My father--oh, G.o.d--my poor father!"

Richard Travis looked up and smiled at him.

"You shoot well, my son," he said, "but not quick enough."

The boy, weeping, saw. Shamed,--burning--he knelt and tried to staunch the wound with a handkerchief. Travis shook his head: "Let it out, my son--let it out--it is poison! Let it out!"

Then he lay down again on the ground. It felt sweet to rest.

The boy saw his blood on the ground and he shouted: "Blood,--my father--blood is thicker than water."

Then the hatred that had burned in his heart for his father, the father who had begot him into the world, disgraced, forsaken--the father who had ruined and abandoned his mother, was turned into a blaze of fury against the blacksmith, the blacksmith whom he had loved.

Wheeling, he rushed toward the jail, but met the mob pouring panic-stricken back with white faces, blanched with fear.