The Tempering. Charles Buck
to hedge or back down, let him stay at home. After they get to Frankfort, it will be too late."
"And when they does git thar," inquired the man from Clay County incisively, "what then?"
"They will receive their instructions in due time – and don't bring any quitters," was the sharply snapped response.
Bev. Jett was the High Sheriff of Martin County, for in unaltered Appalachia, with its quaint survivals of Elizabethan speech, where jails are jail-houses and dolls are puppets, the sheriff is still the High Sheriff.
Now on a bleak January day, when snow-freighted clouds obscured the higher reaches of the hills, he was riding along sloppy ways, cut off from outer life by the steep barrier of Cedar Mountain.
Eventually he swung himself down from his saddle before Asa Gregory's door and tossed his bridle-rein over a picket of the fence, shouting, according to custom, his name and the assurance that he came upon a mission of friendliness.
Bev. Jett remembered that when last he had dismounted at this door there had been in his mind some apprehension as to the spirit of his reception. On that occasion he had been the bearer of an indictment which, in the prolix phrases of the law, made allegation that the householder had "with rifle or pistol or other deadly weapon loaded with powder and leaden bullet or other hard and combustible substance, wilfully, feloniously and against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Kentucky," accomplished a murder. Now his mission was more diplomatic, and Asa promptly threw open the door and invited him to "light down and enter in."
"Asa," said the officer, when he had paid his compliments to the wife and admired the baby, "Jedge Beard sent me over hyar ter hev speech with ye. Hit hes ter do with ther matter of yore askin' fer a pardon. Of course, though, hit's a right mincy business an' must be undertook in heedful fashion."
Judge Baird, whose name the Sheriff pronounced otherwise, had occupied the bench when Asa had been less advantageously seated in the prisoner's dock.
Reflecting now upon the devious methods and motives of mountain intrigue, Gregory's eyes grew somewhat flinty as he bluntly inquired, "How does ye mean hit's a mincy business?"
"Hit's like this. Jedge Beard figgers thet atter all this trouble in Frankfort, with you an' ther Carr boys both interested in ther same proposition, they mout be willin' ter drap yore prosecution of thar own will."
Asa Gregory broke into a low laugh and a bitter one.
"So thet's how ther land lays, air hit? He 'lows they'll feel friendly ter me, does he? Did ye ever see a rattlesnake thet could he gentled inter a pet?"
"Ye've got ther wrong slant on ther question, Asa," the sheriff hastened to explain. "The Jedge don't 'low thet ye ought ter depend on no sich an outcome – an' he hain't dodgin'. None-the-less while he's on ther bench he's obleeged ter seem impartial. His idee is ter try ter git ye thet pardon right now if so be hit's feasible – but he counsels thet if ye does git hit ye'd better jest fold hit up an' stick hit in yore pants pocket an' keep yore mouth tight. If ther Carrs draps ther prosecution, then ye won't hev ter show hit at all, an' they won't be affronted neither. Ef they does start doggin' ye afresh, ye kin jest flash hit when ye comes ter co'te, an' thet'd be ther end of ther matter. Don't thet strike ye as right sensible?"
"Thet suits me all right," acceded the indicted man slowly, "provided I've got a pardon ter flash."
Once more the sheriff's head nodded in reflective acquiescence.
"Thet's why ye'd better hasten like es if ye war goin' down ter Frankfort ter borry fire. They're liable ter throw our man out – an' then hit'll be too late." After a pause for impressiveness, the Sheriff continued,
"Hyar's a letter of introduction from ther Jedge ter ther Governor, an' another one from ther Commonwealth's attorney. They both commends ye ter his clemency."
"I'd heered tell thet Saul Fulton an' one or two other fellers aimed ter take a passel of men ter Frankfort, ter petition ther legislater," suggested Asa thoughtfully. "I'd done studied some erbout goin' along with 'em."
"Don't do hit," came the quick and positive reply. "Ef them fellers gits inter any manner of trouble down thar ther Governor couldn't hardly pardon ye without seemin' ter be rewardin' lawlessness. Go by yoreself – an' keep away from them others."
On the evening of the twenty-fifth of January Colonel Tom Wallifarro stepped from the Louisville train at Frankfort and turned his steps toward the stone-pillared front of the Capitol Hotel. Across the width of Main Street, behind its iron fence, loomed the ancient pile of the state house with its twilight frown of gray stone. The three-storied executive building lay close at its side. Over the place, he fancied, gloomed a heavy spirit of suspense. The hills that fringed the city were ragged in their wintriness, and ash-dark with the thickening dusk.
Bearing a somewhat heavy heart, the Colonel registered and went direct to his room. Like drift on a freshet, elements of irreconcilable difference were dashing pell-mell toward catastrophe. Colonel Wallifarro's mission here was a conference with several cool hands of both political creeds, actuated by an earnest effort to forestall any such overt act as might end in chaos.
But the spirit of foreboding lay onerously upon him, and he slept so fitfully that the first gray of dawn found him up and abroad. River mists still held the town, fog-wrapped and spectral of contour, and the Colonel strolled aimlessly toward the station. As he drew near, he heard the whistle of a locomotive beyond the tunnel, and knowing of no train due of arrival at that hour, he paused in his walk in time to see an engine thunder through the station without stopping. It carried neither freight cars nor coaches, but it was followed after a five-minute interval by a second locomotive, which panted and hissed to a grinding stop, with the solid curve of a long train strung out behind it – a special.
Vestibule doors began straightway to vomit a gushing, elbowing multitude of dark figures to the station platform, where the red and green lanterns still shone with feeble sickliness, catching the dull glint of rifles, and the high lights on faces that were fixed and sinister of expression.
The dark stream of figures flowed along with a grim monotony and an almost spectral silence across the street and into the state house grounds.
There was a steadiness in that detraining suggestive of a matter well rehearsed and completely understood, and as the light grew clearer on gaunt cheekbones and swinging guns an almost terrified voice exclaimed from somewhere, "The mountaineers have come!"
CHAPTER IX
When the senate convened that day, strange and uncouth lookers-on stood ranged about the state house corridors, and their unblinking eyes took account of their chief adversary as he entered.
Upon his dark face, with its overhanging forelock, flickered no ghost of misgiving; no hint of any weakening or excitement. His gaze betrayed no interest beyond the casual for the men along the walls, whom report credited with a murderous hatred of himself.
Boone was fretting his heart out at the cabin of Saul Fulton while he knew that history was in the making at Frankfort, and on the evening of the twenty-ninth an eagerness to be near the focus of activity mastered him. The elements of right and wrong involved in this battle of political giants were, to his untrained mind, academic, but the drama of conflict was like a bugle-call – clear, direct and urgent.
He would not be immediately needed on the farm, and Frankfort was only fifteen miles away. If he set out at once and walked most of the night, he could reach the Mecca of his pilgrimage by tomorrow morning, and in his pocket was the sum of "two-bits" to defray the expenses of "snacks an' sich-like needcessities." For the avoidance of possible discussion, he slipped quietly out of the back door with no announcement to Saul's wife. With soft snowflakes drifting into his face and melting on his eyelashes, he began his march, and for four hours swung along at a steady three-and-a-half mile gait. At last he stole into a barn and huddled down upon a straw pile, but before dawn he was on the way again, and in the early light he turned into the main street of the state capital. His purpose was to view one day of life in a city and then to slip back to his uneventful duties.
The town had outgrown its first indignant surprise over the invasion of the "mountain army," and the senator from Kenton had passed boldly