The Bishop of Cottontown: A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills
Travis I am going to kill--it's--it's Alice's husband of only two
days--her lover--"
"Shoot! Why don't you shoot?" they shouted. "We are waiting to
rush--"
Even where he stood, Richard Travis could see the old calm, quiet and
now triumphant smile lighting up Tom Travis's face, and he knew he
was thinking of Alice--Alice, his bride.
And then that same nervous, uncanny chill ran into the very marrow of
Richard Travis and brought his gun down with an oath on his lips as
he said pitifully--"I am poisoned--it is that!"
The crowd shouted and urged him to shoot, but he sat shaking to his
very soul. And when it passed there came the old half humorous, half
bitter, cynical laugh as he said: "Alice--Alice a widow--"
It passed, and again there leaped into his eyes the great light Jud
Carpenter had seen there that morning, and slipping the cartridges
out of the barrel's breech, he looked up peacefully with the halo of
a holy light around his eyes as he said: "Oh, God, and I thank
Thee--for this--this touch again! Hold the little spark in my
heart--hold it, oh, God, but for a little while till the temptation
is gone, and I shall rest--I shall rest."
"Shoot--Richard Travis--why the devil don't you shoot?" they shouted.
He raised his rifle again, this time with a flourish which made some
of the mob think he was taking unnecessary risk to attract the
attention of the grim blacksmith who stood, pistol in hand, his
piercing eyes scanning the crowd. He stood by the side of Tom Travis,
his bodyguard to the last.
"Jack--Jack--" kept whispering to him the old preacher, "don't shoot
till you're obleeged to,--maybe God'll open a way, maybe you won't
have to spill blood. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord."
Jack smiled. It was a strange smile--of joy, in the risking glory of
the old life--the glory of blood-letting, of killing, of death. And
sorrow--sorrow in the new.
"Stand pat, stand pat, Bishop," he said; "you all know the trade. Let
me who have defied the law so long, let me now stand for it--die for
it. It's my atonement--ain't that the word? Ain't that what you said
about that there Jesus Christ, the man you said wouldn't flicker even
on the Cross, an' wouldn't let us flicker if we loved Him--Hol' him
to His promise, now, Bishop. It's time for us to stand pat. No--I'll
not shoot unless I see some on 'em makin' a too hasty movement of
gun-arm toward Cap'n--"
Had Richard Travis looked from his horse down into the crowd he had
seen another sight. Man can think and do but one thing at a time, but
oh, the myrmidons of God's legions of Cause and Effect!
Below him stood a boy, his face white in the terrible tragedy of his
determination. And as Richard Travis threw up his empty rifle, the
octagonal barrel of the pistol in the boy's hand leaped up and came
straight to the line of Richard Travis's heart. But before the boy
could fire Travis saw the hawk-like flutter of the blacksmith's
pistol arm, as it measured the distance with the old quick training
of a bloody experience, and Richard Travis smiled, as he saw the
flash from the outlaw's pistol and felt that uncanny chill starting
in his marrow again, leap into a white heat to the shock of the ball,
and he pitched limply forward, slipped from his horse and went down
on the ground murmuring, "Tom--Tom--safe, and Alice--he shot at
last--and--thank God for the touch again!"
He lay quiet, feeling the life blood go out of him. But with it came
an exhalation he had never felt before--a glory that, instead of
taking, seemed to give him life.
The mob rushed wildly at the jail at the flash of Jack Bracken's
pistol, all but one, a boy--whose old dueling pistol still pointed at
the space in the air, where Richard Travis had sat a moment
before--its holder nerveless--rigid--as if turned into stone.
He saw Richard Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to
the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a
helpless, pitiful way,--then lie down as if it were sweet to rest.
And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid,
numbed--pointing at the stars.
Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of
the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the
words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: "Stand back--all;
Me--me alone, shoot--me! I who have so often killed the law, let me
die for it."
And then came to the boy's ears the terrible staccato cough of the
two Colts pistols whose very fire he had learned to know so well. And
he knew that the blacksmith alone was shooting--the blacksmith he
loved so--the marksman he worshipped--the man who had saved his
life--the man who had just shot his father.
Richard Travis sat up with an effort and looked at the boy standing
by him--looked at him with frank, kindly eyes,--eyes which begged
forgiveness, and the boy saw himself there--in Richard Travis, and
felt a hurtful, pitying sorrow for him, and then an uncontrolled, hot
anger at the man who had shot him out of the saddle. His eyes
twitched wildly, his heart jumped in smothering beats, a dry sob
choked him, and he sprang forward crying: "My father--oh, God--my
poor father!"
Richard Travis looked up and smiled at him.
"You shoot well, my son," he said, "but not quick enough."
The boy, weeping, saw. Shamed,--burning--he knelt and tried to
staunch the wound with a handkerchief. Travis shook his head: "Let it
out, my son--let it out--it is poison! Let it out!"
Then he lay down again on the ground. It felt sweet to rest.
The boy saw his blood on the ground and he shouted: "Blood,--my
father--blood is thicker than water."
Then the hatred that had burned in his heart for his father, the
father who had begot him into the world, disgraced, forsaken--the
father who had ruined and abandoned his mother, was turned into a
blaze of fury against the blacksmith, the blacksmith whom he had
loved.
Wheeling, he rushed toward the jail, but met the mob pouring
panic-stricken back with white faces, blanched with fear.
Jack Bracken stood alone on the barricade, shoving more cartridges
into his pistol chambers.
The boy, blinded, weeping, hot with a burning revenge, stumbled and
fell twice over dead men lying near the gateway. Then he crawled
along over them under cover of the fence, and kneeling within twenty
feet of the gate, fired at the great calm figure who had driven the
mob back, and now stood reloading.
Jack did not see the boy till he felt the ball crush into his side.
Then all the old, desperate, revengeful instinct of the outlaw
leaped into his eyes as he quickly turned his unerring pistol on the
object from whence the flash came. Never had he aimed so accurately,
so carefully, for he felt his own life going out, and this--this was
his last shot--to kill.
But the object kneeling among the dead arose with a smile of
revengeful triumph and stood up calmly under the aim of the great
pistol, his fair hair flung back, his face lit up with the bravery of
all the Travises as he shouted:
"Take that--damn you--from a Travis!"
And when Jack saw and understood, a smile broke through his
bloodshot, vengeful eyes as starlight falls on muddy waters, and he
turned away his death-seeking aim, and his mouth trembled as he said:
"Why--it's--it's the Little 'Un! I cudn't kill him--" and he clutched
at the cotton-bale as he went down, falling--and Captain Tom grasped
him, letting him down gently.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE ATONEMENT
And now no one stood between the prisoner and death but the old
preacher and the tall man in the uniform of a Captain of Artillery.
And death it meant to all of them, defenders as well as prisoners,
for the mob had increased in numbers as in fury. Friends, kindred,
brothers, fathers--even mothers and sisters of the dead were there,
bitter in the thought that their dead had been murdered--white men,
for one old negress.
In their fury they did not think it was the law they themselves were
murdering. The very name of the law was now hateful to them--the law
that had killed their people.
Slowly, surely, but with grim deadliness they laid their plans--this
time to run no risk of failure.
There was a stillness solemn and all-pervading. And from the window
of the jail came again in wailing uncanny notes:--
"I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger,
I can tarry, I can tarry but a night--"
It swept over the mob, frenzied now to the stillness of a white heat,
like a challenge to battle, like the flaunt of a red flag. Their
dead lay all about the gate of the rock fence, stark and still. Their
wounded were few--for Jack Bracken did not wound. They saw them
all--dead--lying out there dead--and they were willing to die
themselves for the blood of the old woman--a negro for whom white men
had been killed.
But their wrath now took another form. It was the wrath of coolness.
They had had enough of the other kind. To rush again on those bales
of cotton doubly protected behind a rock fence, through one small
gate, commanded by the fire of such marksmen as lay there, was not to
be thought of.
They would burn the jail over the heads of its defenders and kill
them as they were uncovered. A hundred men would fire the jail from
the rear, a hundred more with guns would shoot in front.
It was Jud Carpenter who planned it, and soon oil and saturated paper
and torches were prepared.
"We are in for it, Bishop," said Captain Tom, as he saw the
preparation; "this is worse than Franklin, because there we could
protect our rear."
He leaped up on his barricade, tall and splendid, and called to them
quietly and with deadly calm:
"Go to your homes, men--go! But if you will come, know that I fought
for my country's laws from Shiloh to Franklin, and I can die for them
here!"
Then he took from over his heart a small silken flag, spangled with
stars and the blood-splotches of his father who fell in Mexico, and
he shook it out and flung it over his barricade, saying cheerily: "I
am all right for a fight now, Bishop. But oh, for just one of my
guns--just one of my old Parrots that I had last week at Franklin!"
The old man, praying on his knees behind his barricade, said:
"Twelve years ago, Cap'n Tom, twelve years. Not last week."
The mob had left Richard Travis for dead, and in the fury of their
defeat had thought no more of him. But now, the loss of blood, the cool
night air revived him. He sat up, weak, and looked around. Everywhere
bonfires burned. Men were running about. He heard their talk and he knew
all. He was shot through the left lung, so near to his heart that, as he
felt it, he wondered how he had escaped.
He knew it by the labored breathing, by the blood that ran down and half
filled his left boot. But his was a constitution of steel--an athlete, a
hunter, a horseman, a man of the open. The bitterness of it all came
back to him when he found he was not dead as he had hoped--as he had
made Jack Bracken shoot to do.
"To die in bed at last," he said, "like a monk with liver complaint--or
worse still--my God, like a mad dog, unless--unless--her lips--Helen!"
He lay quite still on the soft grass and looked up at the stars. How
comfortable he was! He felt around.
A boy's overcoat was under him--a little round-about, wadded up, was his
pillow.
He smiled--touched: "What a man he will make--the brave little devil!
Oh, if I can live to tell him he is mine, that I married his mother
secretly--that I broke her heart with my faithlessness--that she died
and the other is--is her sister."
He heard the clamor and the talk behind him. The mob, cool now, were
laying their plans only on revenge,--revenge with the torch and the
bullet.
Jud Carpenter was the leader, and Travis could hear him giving his