"I reckon maybe some of us might help," remarked Mr. Watts, reflectively.
Jim Bardlock swore a violent oath. "That's the talk!" he shouted. "Ef I
ain't the first man of this crowd to set my foot in Roowun, an' first to
beat in that jail door, an' take 'em out an' hang 'em by the neck till
they're dead, dead, dead, I'm not Town Marshal of Plattville, County of
Carlow, State of Indiana, and the Lord have mercy on our souls!"
Tom Martin looked at the brown stain and quickly turned away; then he went
back slowly to the village. On the way he passed Warren Smith.
"Is it so?" asked the lawyer.
Martin answered with a dry throat. He looked out dimly over the sunlit
fields, and swallowed once or twice. "Yes, it's so. There's a good deal of
it there. Little more than a boy he was." The old fellow passed his seamy
hand over his eyes without concealment. "Peter ain't very bright,
sometimes, it seems to me," he added, brokenly; "overlook Bodeffer and
Fisbee and me and all of us old husks, and--and--" he gulped suddenly,
then finished--"and act the fool and take a boy that's the best we had. I
wish the Almighty would take Peter off the gate; he ain't fit fer it."
When the attorney reached the spot where the crowd was thickest, way was
made for him. The old colored man, Xenophon, approached at the same time,
leaning on a hickory stick and bent very far over, one hand resting on his
hip as if to ease a rusty joint. The negro's age was an incentive to
fable; from his appearance he might have known the prophets, and he wore
that hoary look of unearthly wisdom many decades of superstitious
experience sometimes give to members of his race. His face, so tortured
with wrinkles that it might have been made of innumerable black threads
woven together, was a living mask of the mystery of his blood. Harkless
had once said that Uncle Xenophon had visited heaven before Swedenborg and
hell before Dante. To-day, as he slowly limped over the ties, his eyes
were bright and dry under the solemn lids, and, though his heavy nostrils
were unusually distended in the effort for regular breathing, the deeply
puckered lips beneath them were set firmly.
He stopped and looked at the faces before him. When he spoke his voice was
gentle, and though the tremulousness of age harped on the vocal strings,
it was rigidly controlled. "Kin some kine gelmun," he asked, "please t'be
so good ez t' show de ole main whuh de W'ite-Caips is done shoot Marse
Hawkliss?"
"Here was where it happened, Uncle Zen," answered Wiley, leaning him
forward. "Here is the stain."
Xenophon bent over the spot on the sand, making little odd noises in his
throat. Then he painfully resumed his former position. "Dass his blood,"
he said, in the same gentle, quavering tone. "Dass my bes' frien' whut lay
on de groun' whuh yo staind, gelmun."