II
THE BELLED BUZZARD
There was a swamp known as Little Niggerwool, to distinguish it from BigNiggerwool, which lay across the river. It was traversable only by thosewho knew it well--an oblong stretch of tawny mud and tawny water,measuring maybe four miles its longest way and two miles roughly at itswidest; and it was full of cypress and stunted swamp oak, with edgingsof canebrake and rank weeds; and in one place, where a ridge crossed itfrom side to side, it was snaggled like an old jaw with dead treetrunks, rising close-ranked and thick as teeth. It was untenanted ofliving things--except, down below, there were snakes and mosquitoes, anda few wading and swimming fowl; and up above, those big woodpeckers thatthe country people called logcocks--larger than pigeons, with flamingcrests and spiky tails--swooping in their long, loping flight from snagto snag, always just out of gunshot of the chance invader, and utteringa strident cry which matched those surroundings so fitly that it mightwell have been the voice of the swamp itself.
On one side little Niggerwool drained its saffron waters off into asluggish creek, where summer ducks bred, and on the other it endedabruptly at a natural bank of high ground, along which the countyturnpike ran. The swamp came right up to the road and thrust its fringeof reedy, weedy undergrowth forward as though in challenge to the goodfarm lands that were spread beyond the barrier. At the time I amspeaking of it was mid-summer, and from these canes and weeds andwaterplants there came a smell so rank as almost to be overpowering.They grew thick as a curtain, making a blank green wall taller than aman's head.
Along the dusty stretch of road fronting the swamp nothing living hadstirred for half an hour or more. And so at length the weed-stemsrustled and parted, and out from among them a man came forth silentlyand cautiously. He was an old man--an old man who had once been fat, butwith age had grown lean again, so that now his skin was by odds toolarge for him. It lay on the back of his neck in folds. Under the chinhe was pouched like a pelican and about the jowls was wattled like aturkey gobbler.
He came out upon the road slowly and stopped there, switching his legsabsently with the stalk of a horseweed. He was in his shirtsleeves--arespectable, snuffy old figure; evidently a man deliberate in words andthoughts and actions. There was something about him suggestive of an oldstaid sheep that had been engaged in a clandestine transaction and wasafraid of being found out.
He had made amply sure no one was in sight before he came out of theswamp, but now, to be doubly certain, he watched the empty road--firstup, then down--for a long half minute, and fetched a sighing breath ofsatisfaction. His eyes fell upon his feet, and, taken with an idea, hestepped back to the edge of the road and with a wisp of crabgrass wipedhis shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was of a different color andtexture from the soil of the upland. All his life Squire H. B. Gathershad been a careful, canny man, and he had need to be doubly careful onthis summer morning. Having disposed of the mud on his feet, he settledhis white straw hat down firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road,he climbed a stake-and-rider fence laboriously and went ploddingsedately across a weedfield and up a slight slope toward his house, halfa mile away, upon the crest of the little hill.
He felt perfectly natural--not like a man who had just taken afellowman's life--but natural and safe, and well satisfied with himselfand with his morning's work. And he was safe; that was the mainthing--absolutely safe. Without hitch or hindrance he had done the thingfor which he had been planning and waiting and longing all these months.There had been no slip or mischance; the whole thing had worked out asplainly and simply as two and two make four. No living creature excepthimself knew of the meeting in the early morning at the head of LittleNiggerwool, exactly where the squire had figured they should meet; noneknew of the device by which the other man had been lured deeper anddeeper in the swamp to the exact spot where the gun was hidden. No onehad seen the two of them enter the swamp; no one had seen the squireemerge, three hours later, alone.
The gun, having served its purpose, was hidden again, in a place nomortal eye would ever discover. Face downward, with a hole between hisshoulder blades, the dead man was lying where he might lie undiscoveredfor months or for years, or forever. His pedler's pack was buried inthe mud so deep that not even the probing crawfishes could find it. Hewould never be missed probably. There was but the slightest likelihoodthat inquiry would ever be made for him--let alone a search. He was astranger and a foreigner, the dead man was, whose comings and goingsmade no great stir in the neighborhood, and whose failure to come againwould be taken as a matter of course--just one of those shiftless,wandering Dagoes, here today and gone tomorrow. That was one of the bestthings about it--these Dagoes never had any people in this country toworry about them or look for them when they disappeared. And so it wasall over and done with, and nobody the wiser. The squire clapped hishands together briskly with the air of a man dismissing a subject fromhis mind for good, and mended his gait.
He felt no stabbings of conscience. On the contrary, a glow ofgratification filled him. His house was saved from scandal; his presentwife would philander no more--before his very eyes--with these youngDagoes, who came from nobody knew where, with packs on their backs andpersuasive, wheedling tongues in their heads. At this thought the squireraised his head and considered his homestead. It looked good to him--thesmall white cottage among the honey locusts, with beehives and flowerbeds about it; the tidy whitewashed fence; the sound outbuildings at theback, and the well-tilled acres roundabout.
At the fence he halted and turned about, carelessly and casually, andlooked back along the way he had come. Everything was as it shouldbe--the weedfield steaming in the heat; the empty road stretching alongthe crooked ridge like a long gray snake sunning itself; and beyond it,massing up, the dark, cloaking stretch of swamp. Everything was allright, but----The squire's eyes, in their loose sacs of skin, narrowedand squinted. Out of the blue arch away over yonder a small black dothad resolved itself and was swinging to and fro, like a mote. Abuzzard--hey? Well, there were always buzzards about on a clear day likethis. Buzzards were nothing to worry about--almost any time you couldsee one buzzard, or a dozen buzzards if you were a mind to look forthem.
But this particular buzzard now--wasn't he making for Little Niggerwool?The squire did not like the idea of that. He had not thought of thebuzzards until this minute. Sometimes when cattle strayed the owners hadbeen known to follow the buzzards, knowing mighty well that if thebuzzards led the way to where the stray was, the stray would be past thesmall salvage of hide and hoofs--but the owner's doubts would be set atrest for good and all.
There was a grain of disquiet in this. The squire shook his head todrive the thought away--yet it persisted, coming back like a midgedancing before his face. Once at home, however, Squire Gathers deportedhimself in a perfectly normal manner. With the satisfied proprietorialeye of an elderly husband who has no rivals, he considered his youngwife, busied about her household duties. He sat in an easy-chair uponhis front gallery and read his yesterday's Courier-Journal which therural carrier had brought him; but he kept stepping out into the yardto peer up into the sky and all about him. To the second Mrs. Gathers heexplained that he was looking for weather signs. A day as hot and stillas this one was a regular weather breeder; there ought to be rain beforenight.
"Maybe so," she said; "but looking's not going to bring rain."
Nevertheless the squire continued to look. There was really nothing toworry about; still at midday he did not eat much dinner, and before hiswife was half through with hers he was back on the gallery. His paperwas cast aside and he was watching. The original buzzard--or, anyhow, hejudged it was the first one he had seen--was swinging back and forth ingreat pendulum swings, but closer down toward the swamp--closer andcloser--until it looked from that distance as though the buzzard flewalmost at the level of the tallest snags there. And on beyond this firstbuzzard, coursing above him, were other buzzards. Were there four ofthem? No; there were five--five in all.
Such is the way of the buzzard
--that shifting black question mark whichpunctuates a Southern sky. In the woods a shoat or a sheep or a horselies down to die. At once, coming seemingly out of nowhere, appears ablack spot, up five hundred feet or a thousand in the air. In broadloops and swirls this dot swings round and round and round, coming alittle closer to earth at every turn and always with one particular spotupon the earth for the axis of its wheel. Out of space also other movingspots emerge and grow larger as they tack and jib and drop nearer,coming in their leisurely buzzard way to the feast. There is nohaste--the feast will wait. If it is a dumb creature that has fallenstricken the grim coursers will sooner or later be assembled about itand alongside it, scrouging ever closer and closer to the dying thing,with awkward out-thrustings of their naked necks and great dust-raisingflaps of the huge, unkempt wings; lifting their feathered shanks highand stiffly like old crippled grave-diggers in overalls that are tootight--but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the lasttremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. Tohumans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect--he hangs aloft longer;but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, everchambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this bigcharnel bird. Such is the way of the buzzard.
* * * * *
The squire missed his afternoon nap, a thing that had not happened inyears. He stayed on the front gallery and kept count. Those movingdistant black specks typified uneasiness for the squire--not fearexactly, or panic or anything akin to it, but a nibbling, nagging kindof uneasiness. Time and again he said to himself that he would not thinkabout them any more; but he did--unceasingly.
By supper time there were seven of them.
* * * * *
He slept light and slept badly. It was not the thought of that dead manlying yonder in Little Niggerwool that made him toss and fume while hiswife snored gently alongside him. It was something else altogether.Finally his stirrings roused her and she asked him drowsily what ailedhim. Was he sick? Or bothered about anything?
Irritated, he answered her snappishly. Certainly nothing was botheringhim, he told her. It was a hot enough night--wasn't it? And when a mangot a little along in life he was apt to be a light sleeper--wasn't thatso? Well, then? She turned upon her side and slept again with her light,purring snore. The squire lay awake, thinking hard and waiting for dayto come.
At the first faint pink-and-gray glow he was up and out upon thegallery. He cut a comic figure standing there in his shirt in the halflight, with the dewlap at his throat dangling grotesquely in the neckopening of the unbuttoned garment, and his bare bowed legs showing,splotched and varicose. He kept his eyes fixed on the skyline below, tothe south. Buzzards are early risers too. Presently, as the heavensshimmered with the miracle of sunrise, he could make them out--six orseven, or maybe eight.
An hour after breakfast the squire was on his way down through theweedfield to the county road. He went half eagerly, half unwillingly. Hewanted to make sure about those buzzards. It might be that they wereaiming for the old pasture at the head of the swamp. There were sheepgrazing there--and it might be that a sheep had died. Buzzards werenotoriously fond of sheep, when dead. Or, if they were pointed for theswamp, he must satisfy himself exactly what part of the swamp it was. Hewas at the stake-and-rider fence when a mare came jogging down the road,drawing a rig with a man in it. At sight of the squire in the field theman pulled up.
"Hi, squire!" he saluted. "Goin' somewheres?"
"No; jest knockin' about," the squire said--"jest sorter lookin' theplace over."
"Hot agin--ain't it?" said the other.
The squire allowed that it was, for a fact, mighty hot. Commonplaces ofgossip followed this--county politics and a neighbor's wife sick ofbreakbone fever down the road a piece. The subject of crops succeededinevitably. The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly he regrettedit, for the other man, who was by way of being a weather wiseacre,cocked his head aloft to study the sky for any signs of clouds.
"Wonder whut all them buzzards are doin' yonder, squire," he said,pointing upward with his whipstock.
"Whut buzzards--where?" asked the squire with an elaborate note ofcarelessness in his voice.
"Right yonder, over Little Niggerwool--see 'em there?"
"Oh, yes," the squire made answer. "Now I see 'em. They ain't doin'nothin', I reckin--jest flyin' round same as they always do in clearweather."
"Must be somethin' dead over there!" speculated the man in the buggy.
"A hawg probably," said the squire promptly--almost too promptly."There's likely to be hawgs usin' in Niggerwool. Bristow, over on theother side from here--he's got a big drove of hawgs."
"Well, mebbe so," said the man; "but hawgs is a heap more apt to befeedin' on high ground, seems like to me. Well, I'll be gittin' alongtowards town. G'day, squire." And he slapped the lines down on themare's flank and jogged off through the dust.
He could not have suspected anything--that man couldn't. As the squireturned away from the road and headed for his house he congratulatedhimself upon that stroke of his in bringing in Bristow's hogs; and yetthere remained this disquieting note in the situation, that buzzardsflying, and especially buzzards flying over Little Niggerwool, madepeople curious--made them ask questions.
He was half-way across the weedfield when, above the hum of insect life,above the inward clamor of his own busy speculations, there came to hisear dimly and distantly a sound that made him halt and cant his head toone side the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way off, there was athin, thready, broken strain of metallic clinking and clanking--an eeryghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became plainer--tonk-tonk-tonk;then the tonks all running together briskly.
A sheep bell or a cowbell--that was it; but why did it seem to come fromoverhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptlyfrom one quarter to another--from left to right and back again to left?And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even thebreachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle acowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and thesky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and flashing scrutiny.He had it. It was not a cow at all. It was not anything that went onfour legs.
One of the loathly flock had left the others. The orbit of his swing hadcarried him across the road and over Squire Gathers' land. He wassailing right toward and over the squire now. Craning his flabby neck,the squire could make out the unwholesome contour of the huge bird. Hecould see the ragged black wings--a buzzard's wings are so often raggedand uneven--and the naked throat; the slim, naked head; the big feetfolded up against the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too--anundersized cowbell--that dangled at the creature's breast and jangledincessantly. All his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing aboutthe Belled Buzzard. Now with his own eye he was seeing him.
Once, years and years and years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, andbefore freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with acowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seena hundred times--and heard oftener--over an area as wide as half thecontinent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, now in Texas, now inNorth Carolina--now anywhere between the Ohio River and the Gulf.Crossroads correspondents take their pens in hand to write to thecountry papers that on such and such a date, at such a place, So-and-Sosaw the Belled Buzzard. Always it is the Belled Buzzard, never a belledbuzzard. The Belled Buzzard is an institution.
There must be more than one of them. It seems hard to believe that onebird, even a buzzard in his prime, and protected by law in everySouthern state and known to be a bird of great age, could live so longand range so far and wear a clinking cowbell all the time! Probablyother jokers have emulated the original joker; probably if the truthwere known there have been a dozen such; but the country people willhave it that there is only one Belled Buzzard--a bird that bears acharmed life and on his neck a never silent bell.
* * * * *
Squire Gathers regarded it a most untoward thing that the Belled Buzzardshould have come just at this time. The movements of ordinary, unmarkedbuzzards mainly concerned only those whose stock had strayed; but almostanybody with time to spare might follow this rare and famous visitor,this belled and feathered junkman of the sky. Supposing now that someone followed it today--maybe followed it even to a certain thick clumpof cypress in the middle of Little Niggerwool!
But at this particular moment the Belled Buzzard was heading directlyaway from that quarter. Could it be following him? Of course not! It wasjust by chance that it flew along the course the squire was taking. But,to make sure, he veered off sharply, away from the footpath into thehigh weeds so that the startled grasshoppers sprayed up in front of himin fan-like flights.
He was right; it was only a chance. The Belled Buzzard swung off too,but in the opposite direction, with a sharp tonking of its bell, and,flapping hard, was in a minute or two out of hearing and sight, pastthe trees to the westward.
Again the squire skimped his dinner, and again he spent the long drowsyafternoon upon his front gallery. In all the sky there were now nobuzzards visible, belled or unbelled--they had settled to earthsomewhere; and this served somewhat to soothe the squire's pesteredmind. This does not mean, though, that he was by any means easy in histhoughts. Outwardly he was calm enough, with the ruminative judicial airbefitting the oldest justice of the peace in the county; but, withinhim, a little something gnawed unceasingly at his nerves like one ofthose small white worms that are to be found in seemingly sound nuts.About once in so long a tiny spasm of the muscles would contract thedewlap under his chin. The squire had never heard of that play, madefamous by a famous player, wherein the murdered victim was a pedlertoo, and a clamoring bell the voice of unappeasable remorse in themurderer's ear. As a strict churchgoer the squire had no use for playersor for play actors, and so was spared that added canker to hisconscience. It was bad enough as it was.
That night, as on the night before, the old man's sleep was broken andfitful and disturbed by dreaming, in which he heard a metal clapperstriking against a brazen surface. This was one dream that came true.Just after daybreak he heaved himself out of bed, with a flop of hisbroad bare feet upon the floor, and stepped to the window and peeredout. Half seen in the pinkish light, the Belled Buzzard flapped directlyover his roof and flew due south, right toward the swamp--drawing adirect line through the air between the slayer and the victim--or,anyway, so it seemed to the watcher, grown suddenly tremulous.
* * * * *
Knee deep in yellow swamp water the squire squatted, with his shotguncocked and loaded and ready, waiting to kill the bird that now typifiedfor him guilt and danger and an abiding great fear. Gnats plagued himand about him frogs croaked. Almost overhead a log-cock clung lengthwiseto a snag, watching him. Snake doctors, limber, long insects with bronzebodies and filmy wings, went back and forth like small living shuttles.Other buzzards passed and repassed, but the squire waited, forgettingthe cramps in his elderly limbs and the discomfort of the water in hisshoes.
At length he heard the bell. It came nearer and nearer, and the BelledBuzzard swung overhead not sixty feet up, its black bulk a fair targetagainst the blue. He aimed and fired, both barrels bellowing at once anda fog of thick powder smoke enveloping him. Through the smoke he saw thebird careen and its bell jangled furiously; then the buzzard righteditself and was gone, fleeing so fast that the sound of its bell washushed almost instantly. Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down;torn disks of gunwadding and shredded green scraps of leaves descendedabout the squire in a little shower.
He cast his empty gun from him so that it fell in the water anddisappeared; and he hurried out of the swamp as fast as his shaky legswould take him, splashing himself with mire and water to his eyebrows.Mucked with mud, breathing in great gulps, trembling, a suspiciousfigure to any eye, he burst through the weed curtain and staggered intothe open, his caution all gone and a vast desperation fairly chokinghim--but the gray road was empty and the field beyond the road wasempty; and, except for him, the whole world seemed empty and silent.
As he crossed the field Squire Gathers composed himself. With pluckedhandfuls of grass he cleansed himself of much of the swamp mire thatcoated him over; but the little white worm that gnawed at his nerves hadbecome a cold snake that was coiled about his heart, squeezing ittighter and tighter!
* * * * *
"TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."--_Page 70._]
This episode of the attempt to kill the Belled Buzzard occurred in theafternoon of the third day. In the forenoon of the fourth, the weatherbeing still hot, with cloudless skies and no air stirring, there was arattle of warped wheels in the squire's lane and a hail at his yardfence. Coming out upon his gallery from the innermost darkened room of hishouse, where he had been stretched upon a bed, the squire shaded hiseyes from the glare and saw the constable of his own magisterialdistrict sitting in a buggy at the gate waiting.
The old man went down the dirtpath slowly, almost reluctantly, with hishead twisted up side wise, listening, watching; but the constable sensednothing strange about the other's gait and posture; the constable wasfull of the news he brought. He began to unload the burden of it withoutpreamble.
"Mornin', Squire Gathers. There's been a dead man found in LittleNiggerwool--and you're wanted."
He did not notice that the squire was holding on with both hands to thegate; but he did notice that the squire had a sick look out of his eyesand a dead, pasty color in his face; and he noticed--but attached nomeaning to it--that when the squire spoke his voice seemed flat andhollow.
"Wanted--fur--whut?" The squire forced the words out of his throat,pumped them out fairly.
"Why, to hold the inquest," explained the constable. "The coroner's sickabed, and he said you bein' the nearest jestice of the peace you shouldserve."
"Oh," said the squire with more ease. "Well, where is it--the body?"
"They taken it to Bristow's place and put it in his stable for thepresent. They brought it out over on that side and his place was thenearest. If you'll hop in here with me, squire, I'll ride you right overthere now. There's enough men already gathered to make up a jury, Ireckin."
"I--I ain't well," demurred the squire. "I've been sleepin' porely theselast few nights. It's the heat," he added quickly.
"Well, suh, you don't look very brash, and that's a fact," said theconstable; "but this here job ain't goin' to keep you long. You see it'sin such shape--the body is--that there ain't no way of makin' out whothe feller was nor whut killed him. There ain't nobody reported missin'in this county as we know of, either; so I jedge a verdict of a unknownperson dead from unknown causes would be about the correct thing. And wekin git it all over mighty quick and put him underground right away,suh--if you'll go along now."
"I'll go," agreed the squire, almost quivering in his newborn eagerness."I'll go right now." He did not wait to get his coat or to notify hiswife of the errand that was taking him. In his shirtsleeves he climbedinto the buggy, and the constable turned his horse and clucked him intoa trot. And now the squire asked the question that knocked at his lipsdemanding to be asked--the question the answer to which he yearned forand yet dreaded.
"How did they come to find--it?"
"Well, suh, that's a funny thing," said the constable. "Early thismornin' Bristow's oldest boy--that one they call Buddy--he heared acowbell over in the swamp and so he went to look; Bristow's got cows, asyou know, and one or two of 'em is belled. And he kept on followin'after the sound of it till he got way down into the thickest part ofthem cypress slashes that's near the middle there; and right there herun acrost it--this body.
"But, suh, squire, it wasn't no cow at all. No, suh; it was a buzzardwith a cowbell on his neck--that's whut it was. Yes, suh; that theresame old Belled Buzzard he's come back agin and is hangin' round. Theytell me he ain't been se
en round here since the year of the yellowfever--I don't remember myself, but that's whut they tell me. Theniggers over on the other side are right smartly worked up over it. Theysay--the niggers do--that when the Belled Buzzard comes it's a sign ofbad luck for somebody, shore!"
The constable drove on, talking on, garrulous as a guinea hen. Thesquire didn't heed him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened only tothose busy inner voices filling his mind with thundering portents. Evenso, his ear was first to catch above the rattle of the buggy wheels thefar-away, faint tonk-tonk! They were about half-way to Bristow's placethen. He gave no sign, and it was perhaps half a minute before hiscompanion heard it too.
The constable jerked the horse to a standstill and craned his neck overhis shoulder.
"Well, by doctors!" he cried, "if there ain't the old scoundrel now,right here behind us! I kin see him plain as day--he's got an oldcowbell hitched to his neck; and he's shy a couple of feathers out ofone wing. By doctors, that's somethin' you won't see every day! In allmy born days I ain't never seen the beat of that!"
Squire Gathers did not look; he only cowered back farther under thebuggy top. In the pleasing excitement of the moment his companion tookno heed, though, of anything except the Belled Buzzard.
"Is he followin' us?" asked the squire in a curiously flat, weightedvoice.
"Which--him?" answered the constable, still stretching his neck. "No,he's gone now--gone off to the left--jest a-zoomin', like he'd doneforgot somethin'."
And Bristow's place was to the left! But there might still be time. Toget the inquest over and the body underground--those were the mainthings. Ordinarily humane in his treatment of stock, Squire Gathersurged the constable to greater speed. The horse was lathered and hissides heaved wearily as they pounded across the bridge over the creekwhich was the outlet to the swamp and emerged from a patch of woods insight of Bristow's farm buildings.
The house was set on a little hill among cleared fields and was in otherrespects much like the squire's own house except that it was smaller andnot so well painted. There was a wide yard in front with shade trees anda lye hopper and a well-box, and a paling fence with a stile in itinstead of a gate. At the rear, behind a clutter of outbuildings--abarn, a smokehouse and a corncrib--was a little peach orchard, andflanking the house on the right there was a good-sized cowyard, empty ofstock at this hour, with feedracks ranged in a row against the fence. Atwo-year-old negro child, bareheaded and barefooted and wearing but asingle garment, was grubbing busily in the dirt under one of thesefeedracks.
To the front fence a dozen or more riding horses were hitched, flickingtheir tails at the flies; and on the gallery men in their shirtsleeveswere grouped. An old negro woman, with her head tied in a bandanna and aman's old slouch hat perched upon the bandanna, peeped out from behind acorner. There were gaunt hound dogs wandering about, sniffing uneasily.
Before the constable had the horse hitched the squire was out of thebuggy and on his way up the footpath, going at a brisker step than thesquire usually traveled. The men on the porch hailed him gravely andceremoniously, as befitting an occasion of solemnity. Afterward some ofthem recalled the look in his eye; but at the moment they noted it--ifthey noted it at all--subconsciously.
For all his haste the squire, as was also remembered later, was almostthe last to enter the door; and before he did enter he halted andsearched the flawless sky as though for signs of rain. Then he hurriedon after the others, who clumped single file along a narrow little hall,the bare, uncarpeted floor creaking loudly under their heavy farm shoes,and entered a good-sized room that had in it, among other things, ahigh-piled feather bed and a cottage organ--Bristow's best room, now tobe placed at the disposal of the law's representatives for the inquest.The squire took the largest chair and drew it to the very center of theroom, in front of a fireplace, where the grate was banked with witheringasparagus ferns. The constable took his place formally at one side ofthe presiding official. The others sat or stood about where they couldfind room--all but six of them, whom the squire picked for his coroner'sjury, and who backed themselves against the wall.
The squire showed haste. He drove the preliminaries forward with a sortof tremulous insistence. Bristow's wife brought a bucket of freshdrinking water and a gourd, and almost before she was out of the roomand the door closed behind her the squire had sworn his jurors and wascalling the first witness, who it seemed likely would also be the onlywitness--Bristow's oldest boy. The boy wriggled in confusion as he saton a cane-bottomed chair facing the old magistrate. All there, barringone or two, had heard his story a dozen times already, but now it was tobe repeated under oath; and so they bent their heads, listening asthough it were a brand-new tale. All eyes were on him; none werefastened on the squire as he, too, gravely bent his head,listening--listening.
The witness began--but had no more than started when the squire gave agreat, screeching howl and sprang from his chair and staggered backward,his eyes popped and the pouch under his chin quivering as though it hada separate life all its own. Startled, the constable made toward him andthey struck together heavily and went down--both on their allfours--right in front of the fireplace.
The constable scrambled free and got upon his feet, in a squat ofastonishment, with his head craned; but the squire stayed upon thefloor, face downward, his feet flopping among the rustling asparagusgreens--a picture of slavering animal fear. And now his gagging screechresolved itself into articulate speech.
"I done it!" they made out his shrieked words. "I done it! I own up--Ikilled him! He aimed fur to break up my home and I tolled him off intoNiggerwool and killed him! There's a hole in his back if you'll lookfur it. I done it--oh, I done it--and I'll tell everything jest like ithappened if you'll jest keep that thing away from me! Oh, my Lawdy!Don't you hear it? It's a-comin' clos'ter and clos'ter--it's a-comin'after me! Keep it away----" His voice gave out and he buried his head inhis hands and rolled upon the gaudy carpet.
And now they all heard what he had heard first--they heard thetonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them alongthe hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There wasno creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards--and the bell jangledfaster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right tothe door and Squire Gathers wallowed among the chair legs.
The door swung open. In the doorway stood a negro child, barefooted andnaked except for a single garment, eyeing them with serious, rollingeyes--and, with all the strength of his two puny arms, proudly butsolemnly tolling a small rusty cowbell he had found in the cowyard.
The Escape of Mr. Trimm Page 2
