The Bishop of Cottontown Part 95

Crawling--crawling--and dragging the heavy rifle. It seemed he would never strike the rock fence. Once--twice, and yet a third time he had to sink flat on the gra.s.s and spit out the troublesome blood....

The fence at last, and following it he was soon in the rear of the jail. He knew where the back stair was and crawled to it. Slowly, step by step, and every step splotched with his blood, he went up. At the top he pushed up the trap-door with his head and, crawling through, fell fainting.

But, oh, the glory of that feeling that was his now! That feeling that now--now he would atone for it all--now he would be brother to the stars and that Sweeter Thing out, far out, in the pale blue Silence of Things.

Then the old Travis spirit came to him and he smiled: "_Dominecker--oh, my old grandsire, will you think I am a Dominecker now? I found your will--in the old life--and tore it up. But it's Tom's now--Tom's anyway--Dominecker! Wipe it out--wipe it out! If I do not this night honor your blood, strike me from the roll of Travis._"

Around him was the belfry railing, waist high and sheeted with metal save four holes, for air, at the base, where he could thrust his rifle through as he lay flat.

He was in a bullet proof turret, and he smiled: "I hold the fort!"

Slowly he pulled himself up, painfully he stood erect and looked down. Just below him was the barricade of cotton bales, its two defenders, grim and silent behind them--the two wounded ones lying still and so quiet--so quiet it looked like death, and Richard Travis prayed that it was not.

One of them had given him his death wound, but he held no bitterness for him--only that upliftedness, only the glory of that feeling within him he knew not what.

He called gently to them. In astonishment they looked up. Thirty feet above their heads they saw him and heard him say painfully, slowly, but oh, so bravely: "_I am Richard Travis, Tom, and I'll back you to the death.... They are to burn you out ... but I command the jail, both front and rear. Stay where you both are ... be careful ... do not expose yourselves, for while I live you are safe ... and the law is safe._"

And then came back to him clear and with all sweetness the earnest words of the old preacher:

"G.o.d bless you, Richard Travis, for He has sent you jus' in time. I knew that He would, that He'd touch yo' heart, that there was greatness in you--all in His own time, an' His own good way. Praise G.o.d!"

Travis wished to warn the mob, but his voice was nearly gone. He could only sink down and wait.

He heard shouts. They had formed in the rear, and now men with torches came to fire the jail. Their companions in front, hearing them, shouted back their approval.

Richard Travis thrust his rifle barrel through the air hole and aimed carefully. The torches they carried made it all so plain and so easy.

Then two long, spiteful flashes of flame leaped out of the belfry tower and the arm of the first incendiary, shot through and through--holding his blazing torch, leaped like a rabbit in a sack, and the torch went down and out. The torch of the second one was shot out of its bearer's hand.

Panic-stricken, they looked up, saw, and fled. Those in front also saw and bombarded the belfry with shot and pistol ball. And then, on their side of the belfry, the same downward, spiteful flashes leaped out, and two men, shot through the shoulder and the arm, cried out in dismay, and they all fell back, stampeded, at the deadliness of the spiteful thing in the tower, the gun that carried so true and so far--so much farther than their own cheap guns.

They rushed out of its range, gathered in knots and cursed and wondered who it was. But they dared not come nearer. Travis lay still. He could not speak now, for the blood choked him when he opened his mouth, and the stars which had once been above him now wheeled and floated below, and around him. And that Sweeter Thing that had been behind the stars now seemed to surround him as a halo, a halo of silence which seemed to fit the silence of his own soul and become part of him forever. It was all around him, as he had often seen it around the summer moon; only now he felt it where he only saw it before. And now, too, it was in his heart and filled it with a sweet sadness, a sadness that hurt, it was so sweet, and which came with an odor, the smell of the warm rain falling on the dust of a summer of long ago.

And all his life pa.s.sed before him--he lived it again--even more than he had remembered before--even the memory of his mother whom he never knew; but now he knew her and he reached up his arms--for he was in a cradle and she bent over him--he reached up his arms and said: "_Oh, mother, now I know what eternity is--it's remembering before and after!_"

Visions, too--and Alice Westmore--Alice, pitying and smiling approval--smiling,--and then a burning pa.s.sionate kiss, and when he would kiss again it was Helen's lips he met.

And through it all the great uplifting joy, and something which made him try to shout and say: "The atonement--the atonement--"

Clear now and things around him seemed miles away.

He knew he was sinking and he kicked one foot savagely against the turret to feel again the sensation of life in his limb. Then he struck himself in his breast with his right fist to feel it there. But in spite of all he saw a cloud of darkness form beyond the rim of the starlit horizon and come sweeping over him, coming in black waves that would rush forward and then stop--forward, and stop--forward and stop.... And the stops kept time exactly with his heart, and he knew the last stop of the wave meant the last beat of his heart--then forward ... for the last time.... "Oh, G.o.d, not yet!... Look!"

His heart rallied at the sight and beat faster, making the black waves pulse, in the flow and ebb of it.... The thing was below him ... a man ... a ghostly, vengeful thing, whose face was fierce in hatred ...

crawling, crawling, up to the rock fence--a snake with the face ... the eyes of Jud Carpenter....

And the black wave coming in ... and he did so want to live ... just a little ... just a while longer....

He pushed the wave back, as he gripped for the last time his rifle's stock, and he knew not whether it was only visions such as he had been seeing ... or Jud Carpenter really crouching low behind the rock fence, his double-barrel shotgun aimed ... drawing so fine a bead on both the unconscious defenders ... going to shoot, and only twenty paces, and now it rose up, aiming: "_G.o.d, it is--it is Jud Carpenter ...

back--back--black wave!" he cried, "and G.o.d have mercy on your soul, Jud Carpenter...._"

And, oh, the nightmare of it!--trying to pull the trigger that would not be pulled, trying to grip a stock that had grown so large it was now a tree--a huge tree--flowing red blood instead of sap, red blood over things, ... and then at last ... thank G.o.d ... the trigger ... and the flash and report ... the flash so far off ... and the report that was like thunder among the stars ... the stars.... Among the stars ... all around him ... and Alice on one star throwing him a kiss ... and saying: "_You saved his life, oh, Richard, and I love you for it!_" A kiss and forgiveness ... and the two walking out with him ... out into the dim, blue, Sweet Silence of Things, hand in hand with him, beyond even the black wave, beyond even the rim of the rainbow that came down over all ... out--out with music, quaint, sweet, weird music--that filled his soul so, fitted him ... was he ...

"_I'm ... a pilgrim ... I'm a stranger, I can tarry--I can tarry but a night._"

In the early dawn, a local company of State troops, called out by the governor, had the jail safe.

It was a gruesome sight in front of the stone wall where the deadly fire from Jack Bracken's pistols had swept. Thirteen dead men lay, and the back-bone of lynching had been broken forever in Alabama.

It was the governor himself, bluff and rugged, who grasped Jack Bracken's hand as he lay dying, wrapped up, on a bale of cotton, and Margaret Adams, pale, weeping beside him: "Live for me, Jack--I love you. I have always loved you!"

"And for me, Jack," said the old governor, touched at the scene--"for the state, to teach mobs how to respect the law. In the glory of what you've done, I pardon you for all the past."

"It is fitten," said Jack, simply; "fitten that I should die for the law--I who have been so lawless."

He turned to Margaret Adams: "You are lookin' somethin' you want to say--I can tell by yo' eyes."

She faltered, then slowly: "Jack, he was not my son--my poor sister--I could not see her die disgraced."

Jack drew her down and kissed her.

And as his eyes grew dim, a figure, tall and in military clothes, stood before him, shaken with grief and saying, "Jack--Jack, my poor friend--"

Jack's mind was wandering, but a great smile lit up his face as he said: "_Bishop--Bishop--is--is--it Cap'n Tom, or--or--Jesus Christ?_"

And so he pa.s.sed out.

And up above them all in the belfry, lying p.r.o.ne, but still gripping his rifle's stock which, sweeping the jail with its deadly protruding barrel, had held back hundreds of men, they found Richard Travis, a softened smile on his lips as if he had just entered into the glory of the great Sweet Silence of Things. And by him sat the old preacher, where he had sat since Richard Travis's last shot had saved the jail and the defenders; sat and bound up his wound and gave him the last of his old whiskey out of the little flask, and stopped the flow of blood and saved the life which had nearly bubbled out.

And as they brought the desperately wounded man down to the surgeon and to life, the old governor raised his hat and said: "The Travis blood--the Irish Gray--when it's wrong it is h.e.l.l--when it's right it is heaven."

But the old preacher smiled as he helped carry him tenderly down and said: "He is right, forever right, now, Gov'nor. G.o.d has made him so.

See that smile on his lips! He has laughed before--that was from the body. He is smiling now--that is from the soul. His soul is born again."

The old governor smiled and turned. Edward Conway, wounded, was sitting up. The governor grasped his hand: "Ned, my boy, I've appointed you sheriff of this county in place of that scallawag who deserted his post. Stand pat, for you're a Conway--no doubt about that. Stand pat."

Under the rock wall, they found a man, dead on his knees, leaning against the wall; his gun, still c.o.c.ked and deadly, was resting against his shoulder and needing only the movement of a finger to sweep with deadly hail the cotton-bales. His scraggy hair topped the rock fence and his staring eyes peeped over, each its own way. And one of them looked forward into a future which was Silence, and the other looked backward into a past which was Sin.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SHADOWS AND THE CLOUDS

When Richard Travis came to himself after that terrible night, they told him that for weeks he had lain with only a breath between him and death.

"It was not my skill that has saved you," said the old surgeon who had been through two wars and who knew wounds as he did maps of battlefields he had fought on. "No," he said, shaking his head, "no, it was not I--it was something beyond me. That you miraculously live is proof of it."