Chapter XVIII: Toward Sundown

There were still those who pawed at Zabrewski, poked at him with gun barrels and sticks. There was no chance of Zabrewski’s getting away. But that sudden cry of Craig’s--so loud, so determined, so filled with something just a trifle more than human--had brought most of the crowd to facing in his direction.

Craig spoke up:

“_He_ isn’t the man we’re after.”

There was a mixture of voices--surprise and dissent, questions, scoffings. But to the hungry attention of Craig’s inner self there came no sign that he himself was suspected.

“_Here’s_ the man,” said Craig. And he had his hand on Harry’s shoulder, shoving him forward. Harry let out a yelp, blasphemous, of rage and terror. He tried to turn, tried to beat Craig with his fists. But Craig had a grip on Harry’s collar with his right hand. With his left, he jerked Harry’s arm back and up. Harry spat and gasped venom like a snared bobcat.

“Then, who’s _this_ feller?” the captor of Zabrewski demanded.

“A crazy organist.”

There was a laugh at that.

“What was _he_ hidin’ fer?”

Craig shoved the human bobcat to the front. There was no profit in answering too many questions.

“_Here’s_ the man!”

He saw the dark-faced man with the shotgun, the old party with the squirrel rifle, the youth with the horse pistol. They were a solid group in the unorganized mob. Craig addressed them:

“Gentlemen, the reward is yours----”

“You hear what he says?” whinnied the goatee. And there was a look of swift eagerness and pride on the part of the other two trailers.

Craig spoke to the crowd.

“This gentleman here”--referring to goatee--“will tell you the kind of footprint our man makes.”

“A heel off one shoe!” whinnied the old party.

“Right! Right!” yelled those who jostled close to see, and the yell flamed up into something like a cheer.

In the midst of all this, Harry, the Goose, had about as much chance to plead his case as a rat among terriers. But the Zabrewski group was sullen. Some one over in that direction called: “We ought to string ’em both up!”

“None of that!” shouted Craig. “Gentlemen,” and he addressed the squirrel hunter and his companions as he might have addressed partners and old friends, “I’ll ask you to go with me. He’s your prisoner.”

Harry, the Goose, babbled that this was an atrocious and sanguinary frame-up--words to this effect. Here, holding him, bluffing them, was Three Sevens--Thomas Masters--the man who was to blame for all this--the eternally condemned child of evil parentage the whole world was looking for.

Craig twisted Harry and looked into his face. No one but Harry, and possibly Zabrewski, knew what Craig said. But Harry got the message all right, from Craig’s scarcely moving lips:

“Shut up, or I let them lynch you!”

Harry stuttered into silence.

“I’m saving your life,” said Craig silently.

Whereupon Harry hysterically sobbed: “I never done nothin’ to you. Save my life! Save my life!”

“There’s a reward for that man, too,” and this time Craig spoke with directness to Zabrewski’s captor. “You’ll help us--get our men to town.”

Other hunters were coming on the run.

“We got ’em! We got ’em!”

But there was nothing very definite. There was nothing definite at all in Craig’s own mind. What lay ahead of him? He didn’t know. A chance to break through the woods, perhaps. Time! Something might turn up. There was one blur of knowledge in his mind. There was lynching in the air. He had saved Zabrewski from being lynched. That was all, so far. But, wasn’t that enough?

Somehow, they had all got into movement, with some semblance of order. There was a scrambling procession--outrunners, late to arrive, trying to get into positions where they could see and hear, others lagging while they explained to friends and chance acquaintances. And, certain as was the next minute and the contents thereof in Craig’s mind his heart was informing him that, even so, he knew more than any one else, and that knowledge was power--knowledge was confidence, authority, a chance to survive.

No, he could desert neither Zabrewski nor even Harry, the Goose. How long would it be before he himself was recognized? Where was Warden Green? He looked at the sun. The sun was still at least two hours high--high enough to bring them into Fairhaven, five or six miles away. And, even as some generals are reported to have done, Craig prayed for night. Craig may have prayed for a number of things, without calling it prayer. Once, he put his hand into the inside pocket of his coat and again touched the little red ledger. It was as if he had touched the hand of her who had given him this book and written out the contents of it.

The book of his indebtedness to life, the world, himself! When all was said that could be said of his present situation, wasn’t he doing his best to make payment?

“Yes! Yes!” clamored a thousand voices within himself.

They came into a little wood road, and this brought an advantage in that it forced the crowd to straggle out still more, for the road was narrow and deep, and the sides of it were thickly brushed, so that the outrunners were forced to fall back.

A regular procession now, and, at the head of it, the two prisoners--when would there be three, with himself as one of them? There were Zabrewski and Harry, the Goose, held and protected by Craig, and the four men who had accepted from him with hope of reward their deputyship as they would have accepted commissions under the seal of the United States, no less; and friends of these.

Craig had let it be known that he was from San Pedro Prison, as he was; that he was working for the State, as he was; and that he had the warmest sort of friendship for the new warden of San Pedro, Major Gracie, which was likewise true.

To these deputies of his, Craig also privately imparted a stern warning against letting these prisoners become victims of mob law.

“A disgrace to the State,” said Craig, “besides bilking you gentlemen out of what is rightly yours.”

“B’ jinks!” said squirrel shooter. “Let ’em try it!”

And the old party and his friends tightened their grips on their weapons.

In fact, everything was going as Craig himself could have desired it--almost! But what about himself? He couldn’t escape. His own identification lay just ahead. Then there _would_ be a lynching--not of one, or of two, but of three.

But the sun would not come down any the faster for that. And they had left the wood road and come into the highway. There were the first houses of Fairhaven, and crowds--always more crowds. Not only crowds, but noise--always more noise--each moment a little shriller, crueler, more and more like a chorus of yelping howls.

It was this chorus, even more terrifying when heard at a distance than when one was in the thick of it, that had electrified that little party in the Gracie home. The major had hurried away.

And, already, so he was to learn, the local sheriff and chief of police had seen trouble ahead. There, on the outskirts of the town, a policeman or two had tried to preserve order and had been roughly handled. There was laughter. There was ebullition. There was a gluttony for emotion. The town had long been stagnant. Here was something interesting. At the same time, it was something that no one could understand, nor sought to understand, in the fullness of it. Not even the sheriff nor the chief of police, until Major Gracie clarified the whole muddy mixture with a drop of wisdom.

“A lynching!”

There was no local precedent for a thing like this, no local experience.

Major Gracie turned to the sheriff.

“Swear us all in!”

There were some twenty citizens on hand besides the reserve policemen, city judge, clerks, and others. The City Building, with the jail in the back of it, a florid but puny building of brick, was situated on Main Street--a street that was not very wide, but traversed the town, the only street that led direct from the outskirts to the center of the town.

The mob was headed for the center of the town two or three blocks farther on from the City Building where there was a broad plaza, Courthouse Square.

“_They’re goin’ to hang ’em in Courthouse Square!_”

Every one was saying it--apparently. Where had the information come from? No one knew or cared.

“They got Masters, the San Pedro outlaw----”

“And his gang----”

“_Goin’ to hang ’em in Courthouse Square!_”

“Serves ’em right!”

“Fairhaven done it!”

“We’ll show ’em!”

“_Goin’ to hang ’em in Courthouse Square!_”

Joan heard it. There was a shudder in her heart. Her whole body had become a shudder. But there was a degree of fierceness in her suffering. This thing wasn’t right. What had this man done that he should be treated like this? Had she followed the impulse that sprang from the very essence of her being, she would have attacked the whole world with her bare hands, beating on it with her small fists--and then, how the rough old world would have laughed at the spectacle!

“Do something!” she appealed to Gary Lee fiercely.

“What?”

“To check this mob.”

“I’ll join your father,” said Lee, without grace.

He was as clean and good a citizen as one would have met in a week of travel, but he was angry, hurt. That hot spot in the region of his heart was clinking out sparks again ready to burst into flame.

“Do!” she said.

“But not on his account!”

He thrust out his jaw. She knew whom he meant. There was an accusation in his words, not against the escaped convict so much as against herself.

“I hate you,” she retorted.

“Just the same,” he said, “I’m----”

He was going to say that, just the same, he’d marry her. But Joan had flung away from him. Was the prophecy also doomed to remain like that?

It was with a feeling that, over there only a couple of streets beyond, a drama was already under way, that Joan Gracie left her home. She had lingered for her aunt. Age had brought no dimming of interest in the affairs of men to Aunt Katherine, even if the old lady did spend most of her life among her flowers.

But that hint of the theater not built with hands, and of a play already begun not written by man, in which both of these women, the young and the old, felt a vital interest, was accentuated by the wide silence about them, the roar of the multitude over and beyond.

“We can go to Mr. Cantrel’s office,” cried Aunt Katherine.

Cantrel was her agent. He had an office on Main Street, almost opposite the City Building.

“If we can ever get there,” said Joan. “Listen to the crowd.”

“There’s a back way, through the alley.”

“Oh, hurry! Hurry!” panted Joan, and her voice was almost a sob.

There was indeed no time to be lost if they were not to miss the final act of the thing that had begun back there in the woods. The play was rushing to a climax, and that was sure.

Right across Main Street, near the City Building, Major Gracie had drawn up a cordon of police and volunteers. Already, without the publicity of the usual gongs and sirens, the firemen of the town were taking up their stations in the side streets. There were a number of exigencies that would have to be met, and the major had prepared for them all as best he could.

The prisoners would have to be rescued at once. The mob would have to be dispersed and kept dispersed. At the same time, life and property would have to be defended to the utmost. There could be no shooting down even of those deluded fools who were clamoring for the blood of others.

Who these others were there no longer was any doubt. There was ex-Warden Green, at last.

He had come in from the woods, a disappointed and yet an expectant man. Even he didn’t know of the peculiar turn that things had taken. But, from a vantage point, he had caught a glimpse, back there, of convict No. 3777, the man who had won fame to the ex-warden’s eternal disgrace.

So Green had joined the cordon that Major Gracie had formed. He towered among the others. It was there that Craig, with the mob all about him, but chiefly back of him, and with his two cowering prisoners in front of him, saw the ex-warden of San Pedro.

To Craig, in the midst of the human whirlwind and earthquake that threatened to engulf him, it was like a vision of San Pedro itself--the old San Pedro--hell!

He cast his eyes up quickly and to one side. He saw Joan Gracie--the mere glimpsing vision of a face at a window, but vivid, compassionate--bidding him to live.