The Bondboy Part 39

"No, I reckon not, his notions are so high-flown," the colonel admitted, with evident pride in the lofty bearing of the widow's son.

"He's longing for a run over the hills," said she. "He told me he was."

"A year of it in there would kill him," the colonel said. "We must get him a lawyer who can disentangle him. I never saw anybody go down like that boy has gone down in the last month. It's like taking a wild Indian out of the woods and putting him in a cage."

The colonel put aside the corn picture for the day, and went out to confer with Judge Burns, a local lawyer who had gained a wide reputation in the defense of criminal cases. He was a doubly troubled man when he returned home that evening, for Joe had been firm in his refusal either to dismiss Hammer or admit another to his defense. In the library he had found Alice, downcast and gloomy, on the margin of tears.

"Why, honey, you mustn't mope around this way," he remonstrated gently.

"What is it--what's gone wrong with my little manager?"

She raised up from huddling her head against her arms on the table, pushed her fallen hair back from her eyes and gave him a wan smile.

"I just felt so lonely and depressed somehow," said she, placing her hand on his where it lay on the table. "Never mind me, for I'll be all right. What did he say?"

"Judge Burns?"

"Joe."

The colonel drew a chair near and sat down, flinging out his hand with impatient gesture.

"I can't do anything with him," said he. "He says one lawyer will do as well as another, and Hammer's doing all that can be done. 'They'll believe me or they'll not believe me, colonel, and that's all there is to it,' says he, 'and the best lawyer in the world can't change that.'

And I don't know but he's right, too," the colonel sighed. "He's got to come out with that story, every word of it, or there'll never be a jury picked in the whole State of Missouri that'll take any stock in his testimony."

"It will be a terrible thing for his mother if they don't believe him,"

said she.

"We'll do all that he'll allow us to do for him, we can't do any more.

It's a gloomy outlook, a gloomy case all through. It was a bad piece of business when that mountain woman bound him out to old Isom Chase, to take his kicks and curses and live on starvation rations. He's the last boy in the world that you'd conceive of being bound out; he don't fit the case at all."

"No, he doesn't," said she, reflectively.

"But don't let the melancholy thing settle on you and disturb you, child. He'll get out of it--or he'll not--one way or the other, I reckon. It isn't a thing for you to take to heart and worry over. I never should have taken you to that gloomy old jail to see him, at all."

"I can't forget him there--I'll always see him there!" she shuddered.

"He's above them all--they'll never understand him, never in this world!"

She got up, her hair hanging upon her shoulders, and left him abruptly, as if she had discovered something that lay in her heart. Colonel Price sat looking after her, his back very straight, his hand upon his knee.

"Well!" said he. Then, after a long ruminative spell: "Well!"

That same hour Hammer was laboring with his client in the jail, as he had labored fruitlessly before, in an endeavor to induce him to impart to him the thing that he had concealed at the coroner's inquest into Isom Chase's death. Hammer a.s.sured him that it would not pa.s.s beyond him in case that it had no value in establishing his innocence.

"Mr. Hammer, sir," said Joe, with unbending dignity and firmness, "if the information you ask of me was mine to give, freely and honorably, I'd give it. You can see that. Maybe something will turn up between now and Monday that will make a change, but if not, you'll have to do the best you can for me the way it stands. Maybe I oughtn't expect you to go into the court and defend me, seeing that I can't help you any more than I'm doing. If you feel that you'd better drop out of the case, you're free to do it, without any hard feelings on my part, sir."

Hammer had no intention of dropping the case, hopeless as he felt the defense to be. Even defeat would be glorious, and loss profitable, for his connection with the defense would sound his name from one end of the state to the other.

"I wouldn't desert you in the hour of your need, Joe, for anything they could name," said Hammer, with significant suggestion.

His manner, more than his words, carried the impression that they had named sums, recognizing in him an insuperable barrier to the state's case, but that he had put his tempters aside with high-born scorn.

"Thank you," said Joe.

"But if Missis Chase was mixed up in it any way, I want you to tell me, Joe," he pressed.

Joe said nothing. He looked as stiff and hard as one of the iron hitching-posts in front of the court-house, thought Hammer, the side of his face turned to the lawyer, who measured it with quick eyes.

"Was she, Joe?" whispered Hammer, leaning forward, his face close to the bars.

"The coroner asked me that," replied Joe, harshly.

This unyielding quality of his client was baffling to Hammer, who was of the opinion that a good fatherly kick might break the crust of his reserve. Hammer had guessed the answer according to his own thick reasoning, and not very pellucid morals.

"Well, if you take the stand, Joe, they'll make you tell it then,"

Hammer warned him. "You'd better tell me in advance, so I can advise you how much to say."

"I'll have to get on somehow without your advice, thank you sir, Mr.

Hammer, when it comes to how much to say," said Joe.

"There's not many lawyers--and I'll tell you that right now in a perfectly plain and friendly way--that'd go ahead with your case under the conditions," said Hammer. "But as I told you, I'll stick to you and see you through. I wash my hands of any blame for the case, Joe, if it don't turn out exactly the way you expect."

Joe saw him leave without regret, for Hammer's insistence seemed to him inexcusably vulgar. All men could not be like him, reflected Joe, his hope leaping forward to Judge Maxwell, whom he must soon confront.

Joe tossed the night through with his longing for Alice, which gnawed him like hunger and would not yield to sleep, for in his dreams his heart went out after her; he heard her voice caressing his name. He woke with the feeling that he must put the thought of Alice away from him, and frame in his mind what he should say when it came his turn to stand before Judge Maxwell and tell his story. If by some hinted thing, some shade of speech, some qualification which a gentleman would grasp and understand, he might convey his reason to the judge, he felt that he must come clear.

He pondered it a long time, and the face of the judge rose before him, and the eyes were brown and the hair in soft wavelets above a white forehead, and Alice stood in judgment over him. So it always ended; it was before Alice that he must plead and justify himself. She was his judge, his jury, and his world.

It was mid-afternoon when Mrs. Newbolt arrived for her last visit before the trial. She came down to his door in her somber dress, tall, bony and severe, thinner of face herself than she had been before, her eyes bright with the affection for her boy which her tongue never put into words. Her shoes were muddy, and the hem of her skirt draggled, for, high as she had held it in her heavy tramp, it had become splashed by the pools in the soft highway.

"Mother, you shouldn't have come today over the bad roads," said Joe with affectionate reproof.

"Lands, what's a little mud!" said she, putting down a small bundle which she bore. "Well, it'll be froze up by tomorrow, I reckon, it's turnin' sharp and cold."

She looked at Joe anxiously, every shadow in his worn face carving its counterpart in her heart. There was no smile of gladness on her lips, for smiles had been so long apart from her life that the nerves which commanded them had grown stiff and hard.

"Yes," said Joe, taking up her last words, "winter will be here in a little while now. I'll be out then, Mother, to lay in wood for you. It won't be long now."

"Lord bless you, son!" said she, the words catching in her throat, tears rising to her eyes and standing so heavy that she must wipe them away.

"It will all be settled next week," Joe told her confidently.

"I hope they won't put it off no more," said she wearily.

"No; Hammer says they're sure to go ahead this time."

"Ollie drove over yesterday evening and brought your things from Isom's," said she, lifting the bundle from the floor, forcing it to him between the bars. "I brought you a couple of clean shirts, for I knew you'd want one for tomorrow."

"Yes, Mother, I'm glad you brought them," said Joe.

"Ollie, she said she never would make you put in the rest of your time there if she had anything to say about it. But she said if Judge Little got them letters of administration he was after she expected he'd try to hold us to it, from what he said."