The Calico Cat Part 9

"Mr. Edwards," he said, "Lamoury worked for you once, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"You quarreled, didn't you?"

"I discharged him for intemperance."

"There was no bad blood?"

"Lamoury was angry, I believe."

Farnsworth stopped; there was nothing to be gained by this course of questioning in the way of clearing Jim. Of course later, the point that Lamoury had a grudge against the family might have importance, although he could not see just how. Some one else surely heard that gunshot. It was incredible that the neighborhood should be so deserted. If only there were another witness!

The other jurors had no questions. They were, to tell the truth, a little impatient. It was near the dinner-hour, and they were hungry.

The case seemed perfectly plain to them. It was not likely, they argued, that the boy's father could be mistaken.

"You may go," said Paige to Mr. Edwards.

"I don't see," he began, when the witness had left the room, "any need for our going further into this case. Whatever we may think of the animus of the complainant,--I take it that was what you wished to bring out, Mr. Farnsworth,--there seems to be no question but that the boy fired the shot. The presumption seems strong also that he intended to hit. Were there any accident or any good excuse, the boy could, of course, have no motive not to tell it. I suggest that a true bill be found at once, and that we proceed to more important matters. I want to remind you that we have a great deal of work before us."

"Well, gentlemen," said Sampson, "I guess we're pretty much of a mind about this. If no one has any objections, I guess we'll call it a vote." He looked round.

"As we're all agreed--" he began.

"Just a moment, Sampson!" suddenly exclaimed Farnsworth. It had just then flashed over him that Mr. Peaslee, the kind Mr. Peaslee, who gave Jim knives and harmonicas, was next-door neighbor to the Edwardses. If he had been at home when the shot was fired, he must have heard it, and he might have seen some significant thing which questioning might bring out. Of course, if Peaslee had seen anything, he would have spoken, but he might have overlooked the importance of some fact or other.

"Just a moment, Sampson!" he said, and put up his hand. Then he swung sharply in his chair and put the question:--

"Peaslee, where were you when that shot was fired?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cat standing alert facing forward.]

VI

"Peaslee, where were you when that shot was fired?" asked Farnsworth, and as he spoke he turned and looked toward Solomon, whose seat was some three or four places to his left, on the same side of the table.

Had the question not been uttered, it would have died upon his lips, so much surprised was he at what he saw.

Mr. Peaslee, white and trembling with some strong emotion, had his hands upon the table and was raising himself, slowly and painfully, to his feet. He rolled his eyes, which looked bigger and more pathetic than ever behind his gla.s.ses, toward Farnsworth at the sound of his voice, but the young man knew instinctively that Solomon, moved by some strong idea of his own, had not grasped the question.

"Gentlemen," Mr. Peaslee began, in shaky tones, "I guess I got a word to say afore ye find a true bill agin that little feller. He's as peaceable a boy as ever I saw, and I guess I can't let him stay all bolted and barred into no jail, when it don't need anythin' but my say-so to get him out. Ye see, gentlemen,"--Solomon paused, moistened his dry mouth, and cast a timorous look over the puzzled faces of the jurymen,--"ye see, 't was me that shot Lamoury."

Not a sound came from the grand jury; the members sat and stared at him in blank wonder, hardly able to credit their ears. Paige, the state's attorney, who was making some notes at the time, held his pen for a good half-minute part way between his paper and the inkstand while he gazed in astonishment at Peaslee. To have a grand juror, a sober, respectable man, rise in the jury-room and confess that he is the real offender in a case under consideration, is not usual. The surprise was absolute.

For Farnsworth, it was more than a surprise; it was a relief. Then his betrothed had been right; Jim had not fired the shot! He felt a glow of admiration for Nancy's sure intuition and loyalty to her pupil. He rejoiced that Jim was cleared for her sake and for the boy's. Insensibly he had grown more and more interested in Jim and attached to him. Now--everything was explained.

Everything? No, Jim's strange activity in concealing the evidences of the shot, his queer reserve when questioned as to what he knew--these seemed more perplexing than ever.

Farnsworth, hoping for light upon these points, settled back in his chair to listen. Mr. Peaslee had more to say.

"It kinder goes agin the grain," Solomon resumed, with a weary, deprecatory smile, "to own up you've been actin' like a fool, but I guess I got to do it.

"This was the way on 't: I stepped over to Ed'ards's jest to talk over matters and things. Well, I couldn't seem to raise anybody to the front of the house, so I kinder slid into the boy's room to see if there wasn't somebody out back. There wa'n't. There didn't seem to be anybody to home.

"Now, gentlemen, seems as though you'd see how 't was when I tell ye. There's an old white and yaller cat, with a kinder sa.s.sy patch over her eye,"--Mr. Peaslee's meek voice here took on a trace of heat,--"that's been a-pesterin' the life out o' me goin' on a year. I guess ye know how 't is--one of them pesky, yowlin', chicken-stealin', rusty old nuisances that hain't any sociability to 'em, anyhow.

"Well, there she was a-settin', comfortable as a hot punkin pie, and lookin' as if she owned the place. And there was the boy's gun right there handy. The cat riled me so, I jest loaded her up. 'T wa'n't in human natur' not to, now was it? 'T wa'n't nothin' but bird shot, so I sorter stuck in a marble. It couldn't do no harm, and it might kinder help a leetle. And I just fired her off. I didn't expect to hit any French Canadian; I didn't know there was any of the critters round.

"Then when I see a feller fall out of the bushes I was scared, now I tell ye. Here I was, member of the grand jury, and everything, and it didn't somehow seem right and fittin' for no member of the grand jury to be fillin' up a feller human bein' with bird shot an'

marbles. I guess I didn't think much what I was a-doin' of, no-how.

'T any rate, I jest sneaked off home, and then I jest let things slip along and slide along till here I be. I guess if a true bill's got to be found agin any one, it's got to be found agin me."

And Mr. Peaslee sank huddled and hopeless into his chair.

His fellow members were for a moment silent. But soon this tale of a cat, bird shot, and an unexpected Canadian began to disclose a comic aspect; the plight of poor, respectable Mr. Peaslee, in all the fresh honors of his jurorship, began to show a ludicrous side; their own position as grave men seeing what they thought a serious offense change, as by magic, into a farcical accident, bit by bit revealed its humor.

Sampson, the foreman, glanced at Paige, the state's attorney. The young man's face wore an odd expression. Their eyes met, and Sampson's mouth began to twitch. Albion Small, who was "consid'able of a joker," suddenly choked. Farnsworth, having revealed to him in a flash the significance of the harmonica "with harp attachment,"

gave way and laughed outright.

Smiles appeared on faces all round the table; and as the comicality of the whole affair more and more struck upon their astonished minds, the smiles became a general laugh, the laugh a roar. And this mirth had so good-humored a note that Solomon, taking heart, looked about the table with a sheepish grin.

But his heart sank and his grin vanished when his eyes fell upon Abijah Keith. For Abijah did not smile. He sat grim as fate, stern disapproval of all this levity expressed in every deep fold of his wrinkled old countenance.

A formidable person was Abijah. He had a great brush of white hair, which stood up fiercely from his narrow forehead; a high, arched nose like the beak of a hawk, on which rested a pair of huge round spectacles; a mouth like a straight line inclosed between a great parenthesis of leathery wrinkles. Up from under his old-fashioned stock, round a chin like a paving-stone, curled an aggressive, white, wiry beard, and his blue eyes were steel-bright and hard.

"Can't see what you're cackling so for!" he exclaimed, his shrill accents full of contempt. "Actin' like a pa.s.sel of hens! There's a man shot, ain't they? Somebody shot him, didn't they? He"--and Abijah pointed a knotted, skinny, hard old finger at the shrinking Solomon--"he shot him, didn't he? Ser'us business, _I_ call it.

Guess the grand jury's got suthin' to say to it, hain't they? Cat?

Cat's foot, _I_ say. Likely story, likely story. Don't believe a word on 't."

Solomon dared to steal a look, and was not rea.s.sured to see in the jurymen's faces doubt replacing mirth. Then Hiram Hopkins's hearty voice, ringing with opposition, struck upon his delighted ear. He remembered Hiram's dislike for the cantankerous Keith. Here perhaps was a defender.

"Oh, come, Mr. Keith! Oh, come now!" he heard Hopkins exclaim.

"What's the use of raising a rumpus? It wasn't nothing but bird shot. Folks don't go murdering folks with bird shot."

"Don't care if 't was bird shot!" came Abijah's snapping tones.

"Don't care if 't was pin-heads; principle's the same."

"It is, it is!" admitted Solomon, in his soul.

"Well," said Hiram, with a common sense in which Mr. Peaslee took comfort, "the practical effect is mighty different. Gentlemen," he added to the jurors, "I can't see that we've got any call to go any further with this. Peaslee was just shooting at a cat. I don't see the sense of taking up the time of the court and makin' expense for any such foolishness. I say we'd better dismiss young Edwards's case, and Peaslee's along with it. It's such fool doings, I think we'd better, if only to keep folks from laughing at the grand jury."

Solomon's heart was in his mouth. Would the others take this view--or Keith's?

"Oily talk, dretful oily talk!" came Abijah's fierce pipe. "Don't take any stock in 't. Shot him, didn't he? Grand juror--what difference does that make? If they ain't fit, weed 'em out--weed 'em out!"