Charles Buck - The Code of the Mountains

A negro boy, riding a colt and carrying an empty basket, came jogging down the avenue and into the pike, where he drew rein in response to Newt Spooner's signal.

"What mout thet contraption be over yon?" demanded the mountaineer in a surly voice, as he indicated with a jerk of his head the object of his curiosity.

The servant laughed long and loud. He was a young negro and mounted. By putting spurs to his steed he could escape any penalty of insolence, and if the mountaineer dislikes the negro it is with no greater scorn than that which the negro feels for the poor white. When he had finished laughing his white teeth continued to gleam in a wide grin.

"Thet-thar contraption," he mimicked with an excellent impersonation of the nasal drawl in which he had been questioned, "is a platfawm. It's shorely an' p'intedly a platfawm. Our folks is gwine ter have a platfawm dance ternight. Saxton's band's coming frum Lexin'ton ter play de music, and all de quality folks'll be hyar."

At the sneer of the servant's manner, Newt Spooner had slipped down from the place he had assumed on the fence, and stalked menacingly out into the road. The negro had moved his horse a little to the side and waited. But, at the information received, Newt forgot his wrath in the engrossment of a sudden idea. A dance! The young people would be there in force. Perhaps among them would be the one he sought. In his country where round dances are unknown, special invitations are not required. Word goes out that so-and-so is giving a dance at such-and-such a point, and the countryside troops thither for shuffle and jig and wassail.

"I reckon," said Newt slowly, "I reckon I'll be thar."

The black boy let out a loud guffaw. He leaned back with one hand supporting his weight on the haunches of his mount, and whooped his mirthful derision to the open heavens. Newt gazed at him, first in astonishment; then in passion.

"What air ye a-laughin' at, nigger?" he inquired with low-pitched ferocity of voice.

The boy gathered up his reins, and, under the pressure of his spurred heel, the colt was away in a gallop.

"I may be a nigger," he flung back over his shoulder, "but I ain't no po' white trash. The likes of you comin' to our dance! Good Gawd!" A roar of ironical laughter followed in the wake of clattering hoofs, while Newt Spooner, his thin face working with a positive mania of fury, hurled rock after rock at the retreating figure.

Slowly the mountain boy walked back toward town, his black suit already whitened with a fine coating of turnpike dust.

As he neared the court-house, he quickened his step, for a dense crowd was gathered at its front, and he knew that the speaking must be in progress. His people would be in the throng and they would be armed. If he were going to the dance to-night, he needed a gun, and yet his craftiness automatically set a restraint on his impatient haste. Should he rush headlong into that crowd just on the verge of trouble, he might rush also into arrest. The applause and laughter with which the crowd just now jostled shoulders told him that nothing had yet occurred to break the peace or equipoise of the occasion; but that something was to happen he knew, and the knowledge made him cautious. A distinguished-looking gentleman with white hair was speaking from an improvised stand, and, as the ex-convict drew near the outskirts of the crowd, he found himself standing near a man who wore a blue coat, and leaned on a stout hickory staff. The partial uniform of this individual proclaimed a town marshal, and the badge on the breast corroborated the proclamation. It occurred to Newt that to be talking with an officer of the law when the shooting began would constitute an excellent alibi. So he stopped, and touching the officer on the elbow, inquired:

"Stranger, who mout thet man be, thet's a-talkin'?"

The policeman turned and regarded him out of a broad, good-humored face, in which shrewd, but merry eyes twinkled.

Newt wanted that officer to know him the next time they met, and to remember him definitely, so he returned the gaze with one frank and unblinking.

"That's General Braden, sonny," the town marshal amiably enlightened; "he's just introducin' the Honorable Cale Floyd. That's Floyd now."

"I hain't in yore way, am I, stranger?" questioned Newt humbly by way of further emphasizing his presence. "I 'low ef I hain't, I'll jest stay right hyar an' listen at him speak."

The officer laughed.

"Stay right where you are, sonny," he invited; "I expect it's as good a place as any." And then, to the boy's delight, the other laid a hand lightly on his shoulder.

The young man from the waters of Troublesome wore a blank face, although it was difficult. He had told himself that he felt no hostility for this prosecutor who had convicted him. Yet, now, as he saw the tall man step forward to take his place on the platform, remove his felt hat and shake back the black hair which fell, mane-like, over his forehead, Newt acknowledged a sense of gladness that he was to be killed.

The Honorable Cale Floyd had fought a bitter battle back there in the lawless hills for the vindication of law. He had walked in the shadow of death and had been deprived of office; ostracized like Aristides because he was "too just a man."

Now, he had come down here to the cultured bluegrass, and was being pointed out as something of a hero. Clients with well-filled purses brought their litigation to his office. And it came to pass that in the glow of unwonted recognition, the simplicity with which he had faced peril back there in his own country was slipping from him. He felt the theatric quality of the moment, and struck something of a pose as the crowd took in his tall figure and broad shoulders and country lawyer's make-up of frock coat and black string tie. He had recognized that it was more effective to appear the backwoods lawyer than the well-groomed attorney. His mentality would flash more startlingly from six feet of rugged mountaineer, and his attainments would limn themselves forth in a more impressive forcefulness. In short, the Honorable Cale Floyd was not now averse to capitalizing his past vicissitudes.

So he shook back his hair, and stood smiling with the June sun slanting to his fearlessly rugged features and touching them like a face cast in bronze. Then he began to talk. He warmed into his subject, gathering a wine-like thrill from the interested attention of the upturned faces; faces which long jury experience made as readable to him as clear type, and he threw more and more fire into his utterance, until he was borne out of himself and into a realm of eloquence. With a characteristic gesture, he leaned far outward and stretched his hand, index-like, toward the edge of the crowd. Thus had he turned often from the jury-box and scourged with figure and invective the man in the prisoner's dock. It chanced that all unconsciously the finger went like an aimed weapon to the face of Newt Spooner, and straightway the boy saw red. From his mind passed the white brick façade of the bluegrass court-house, the sea of hats and the field of shoulders, and in their stead there rose again before him the dingy interior in Jackson, where he sat beside his counsel, while this same man, with this same gesture, loosed on his head all the bolts of the law's castigation. And at that same moment, playing with hypnotic intensity on his audience, the Honorable Cale Floyd fell instantly and suddenly silent, holding his bronze-like pose of outstretched arm and hand. It was only for a momentary pause: an oratorical trick of contrast and emphasis, out of which his voice would presently ring again in compelling tones. But in that instant of quiet there rose from the center of the crowd a sudden shuffle and a muffled outcry accompanied by a swaying of bodies. It was so close to the stand that the speaker, looking off more widely, was conscious of it only with annoyance for a marred effect. But, as he drew himself erect once more, to the undefined disturbance was added an outbreak of oaths, and, before they had died away, several close pistol reports came spitting sharply from the front, and little wisps of blue smoke twisted upward above the hats. At once there followed a general pandemonium, shoving, shouting, the shrill screams of women; an effort among the panic-stricken to get away by climbing over those who obstructed them.