The hand of God
“There ain’t a pris’ner got away from me yet, an’ they ain’t goin’ to
take one now.” He sat down at his desk again, scowling.
A cloud of smoke came irritably from his lips. Perspiration streamed
down his face. It was hot. The mob was buzzing more angrily, now. The
sheriff knew what was needed, of course. Something to puzzle the men
outside. Something to focus their attention somewhere else. A storm. A
house on fire. Anything would do. He heard them puffing and grunting
at something heavy. It wouldn’t do to look out of the window. His job
was sitting here where all men could see him, with a revolver on the
desk before him, making of himself a threat.
But it would be hard to kill men in defense of a murderer as low-down
as Sam Blake. Lying there in ambush, waiting until a man stood still
as a fair target----
The squeak of a wheel, outside. The sheriff grunted to himself, tucking
his handkerchief inside his collar. Half of a log cart. They’d swing a
ten-foot section of log to it and grab the shaft. Rush it against the
jail door. It would break in. Then they’d come in and it would be time
for the sheriff to start shooting.
“Gawd!” growled the sheriff disgustedly, “shootin’ them damn fools so’s
a blasted murderer can be ’lec-trocuted instead o’ hung! That’s all it
’mounts to.”
It hurt. He didn’t like lynchings. Never had believed in them. Never
would. But Sam Blake was the coldest-blooded murderer in the history
of the county. And Kittinger’s kinfolk had a right to see that he
died. If they’d shot Sam dead there in the blacksmith shop, with his
empty gun beside him, nothing would have been done about it. Talk,
maybe, but everybody’d have said it served him right. And there
wasn’t much difference between that and coming and getting him out
of jail.
“Huh!” snapped the sheriff to himself. “Am I gettin’ scared?”
Pounding on the door again. Something definite, final, something
resolved in this pounding.
“Sheriff! Open up! We ain’t goin’ to wait all night!”
* * * * *
The sheriff reached over to his desk and picked up the blued steel
revolver. He squinted at the shells in the cylinder. He was hot and
angry and stubborn and irritated.
“Listen heah t’ me!” he snapped. “I ain’t aimin’ to kill you folks, but
I’m goin’ to do it if yuh try breakin’ in that door! If Sam Blake comes
to an’ confesses, maybe it’ll be another matter. But I ain’t goin’ to
let anybody take an unconscious man outer my jail an’ hang him. If he
confesses, a’right. But if he don’t----”
A momentary silence, while the sheriff raged in sudden shame. He
deliberately cocked his revolver. Moral effect. The click would carry
through the door. Murmurs.
“... Want him t’ know what happens, anyways.... The bloody louse’ll
confess all right. The hand o’ Gawd’s on him.... Doc’ll bring him
to.... Pete, you take yore car an’ get the doc....”
Men went back. More murmurings. Grim satisfaction outside. Somebody
cranked up a car. The sheriff swore bitterly.
“Losin’ my nerve, maybe,” he growled. Then with a harsh disgust: “They
forgot I got a telephone.”
He sat down at his desk again. He replaced the revolver within easy
reach. He knew Sam Blake was guilty. Empty shell on the floor of the
blacksmith shop. Empty gun almost in Sam Blake’s hands. The sheriff
looked over at the killer’s rifle on a table by the wall in his
office.
And then, quite suddenly, the sheriff swore a tremendous oath. He’d
seen---- He thrust himself out of his chair and to the rifle with one
movement. He picked it up. He snapped open the bolt.
An empty, discharged shell flicked out of it and went spinning to the
floor.
The sheriff stared at it for seconds. His pudgy figure was stiff. The
stem of his pipe snapped between his teeth.
“Hand o’ Gawd,” said the sheriff grimly to himself.
He picked up the empty shell. He went back to his desk and rummaged
in the drawer. A little cardboard box. Another empty shell. A brass
shell--the one that had killed Kittinger.
The sheriff set them up, side by side. He’d looked at Sam Blake’s gun.
He’d looked in the barrel for fouling, for proof--which he hadn’t
needed--that it had been recently fired. His handkerchief had fouled
in the bore. Sam Blake’s gun had been fired. The sheriff hadn’t looked
in the breech, however. Hadn’t there been the empty shell on the dirt
floor? What need to look in the breech?
But--a rifle shoots one shell at a time! The killing of Kittinger had
been done with one shot. And now he knew there had been _two_ empty
shells at the scene of the murder! One snapped out of a rifle after
being fired, one left in. Two empty shells in the deserted blacksmith
shop--and only one shot had been heard and only one bullet had been
found.
* * * * *
The sheriff mopped off his face. Stubbornness suddenly intensified
in his rather pudgy figure. This was funny stuff. Nobody was goin’
to take Sam Blake out o’ the jail tonight! Funny stuff. Wheah’d that
extra shell come from? Wheah’d the bullet from it go? Why wasn’t the
other shot heard? Sam Blake must ha’ killed Kittinger, but--why the
other extra shell? The hand of Gawd?
“Ef Gawd’s han’ is in it,” grunted the sheriff stubbornly, “an’ Him
havin’ thunderbolts handy, theah wasn’t any need to waste a
thutty-thutty shell.”
He stared at the two bits of brass in the yellow lamplight. Sweat poured
down his face, but he forgot it. The mob outside the jail was merely
murmuring now. It was waiting. Doc Paulson had been sent for. He would
come. He would be passed into the jail. He would bring Sam Blake back to
consciousness. Maybe Sam would confess. Maybe he wouldn’t, when the mob
would take him. The mob was waiting in a patient deadliness for what it
was going to do.
“Time,” said the sheriff, sweating in an agony of impatience. “I got to
have time to think hit out. Ef Gawd would send a thunderstorm, or set a
house on fire, or somethin’ to get these folks thinkin’ about somethin’
else----”
Two brass shells where there should be only one! Small, insignificant
things for a man’s life to rest upon. The sheriff had been wavering.
Hard to think of killing men so that a proved murderer could be
electrocuted instead of hung. Mighty hard. But something was wrong.
Kittinger had been killed with one shot. The sheriff had heard it.
And here were two empty shells--one from Sam Blake’s gun, and the
other---- Where did the other come from?
The sheriff had to guess, and guess quickly. Doc Paulson would be
back soon. When he was passed in, some members of the mob would force
themselves in too, unless the sheriff started shooting. And when the
mob once got in the jail, Sam Blake would go out with it. Confessing
or not confessing, praying to Gawd or screaming he hadn’t done it.
When Doc Paulson came something was going to happen. Sam Blake was
going to get lynched. And there was something wrong---- Two shells,
instead of one----
“I got to think. A thunderbolt, or a house on fire--even a haystack,
Lord!” said the sheriff helplessly. “Somethin’ t’ gain me time!
Somethin’s wrong!” He beat his forehead with a pudgy fist. “Wheah’s
the hand o’ Gawd?” he demanded despairingly. “Ef Sam Blake ain’t
guilty, why don’t the hand o’ Gawd show up?”
Rumblings. A car coming. The sheriff’s hand closed convulsively.
“I’m goin’ to get killed,” growled the sheriff defiantly, “an’ I’m goin’
to kill some other folks too, an’ Sam Blake’s goin’ to get lynched. This
heah looks wrong t’ me. Ef he’s guilty an’ innocent folks get killed, it
ain’t my fault!”
* * * * *
He gripped the blued steel revolver, full of defiance of some supreme
power on which he had thrown all responsibility.
The car came nearer. Then the sheriff realized that it couldn’t be Doc
Paulson. Too soon for him to get here.
“More folks for the party,” said the sheriff, setting his teeth. “What
happens from now on ain’t my fault. It’s up to the hand o’ Gawd.”
The telephone rang.
The sheriff took down the receiver. It was his deputy talking, half a
dozen miles away--asking fearfully if the sheriff wanted him to come
in to the jail.
“No,” replied the sheriff savagely. “It ain’t up to me, what happens.”
He was in a mood to clutch at straws. “But looka heah! You git to Doc
Paulson’s. Quick! Theah’s a carload of Bethel folks hustlin’ theah to
wake up the doc an’ bring him heah. They want him to bring Sam Blake
to, so’s they can make him confess to the killin’ an’ lynch him. You
git Doc Paulson outer his house if yuh have to drag him out in his
nightgown. He’s to leave word he’ll be back ’most any minute. An’ then
you keep him off somewheres. I’m playin’ for time. Keep him outer his
house until the Bethel crowd leaves. When they come back, I’m goin’ to
have to start shootin’. Understan’?”
The deputy, relieved at so tame an assignment, agreed volubly. The
sheriff hung up the receiver and wiped the sweat off his face. He’d been
asking God to bring on a thunderstorm or a fire, something to unsettle
the lynching mob outside. God hadn’t done it. And the sheriff was still
playing for time, hoping rather desperately for a miracle.
It mightn’t need a miracle, at that. Two small crowds are only
one-fourth as deadly as one large one. While the mob was divided its
menace was lessened. And mobs have no patience. Never. Part of the mob
would not attack, because it would be waiting for the rest to return.
And the rest of it might wait a long time for Doc Paulson to come back
to his house. It might. But of course----
“I’m holdin’ on,” said the sheriff grimly. “It’s up to the Lord to build
me a backfire.”
If he could hold off the lynching until morning, he could get help
from the city and rush Sam to a safe jail. But the sheriff felt weak
and shaky. He was dealing in mob psychology, which was not exactly
one of his strong points, and he knew it.
“But there’s somethin’ wrong,” he said stubbornly. “They ain’t goin’ to
hang Sam Blake t’night.”
He sat and stared at the two small cartridge shells without seeing
them. He was listening--to the low voiced, savage murmuring of the
mob--to the infinitely faint rustling of wind in the topmost branches
of the trees on the courthouse green--to the whimperings of the darky
back in the jail and the stertorous snorings of Sam Blake, too drunk
to know what he’d done.
Time passed very slowly. Twice the mob grew restless, as its increasing
murmuring testified. Each time it quieted down. But it was in a deadly
mood when, all of half an hour later, a car came roaring down the road
from Doc Paulson’s. The sheriff was drenched in sweat, but at the sound
he rose and dried his hands grimly and picked up the big revolver. He
was going to bluff, or he was going to shoot. He was going to keep Sam
Blake from being lynched, or he was going to be killed. And he renounced
all blame from the beginning.
He unlocked and flung open the jail door and stood in the opening,
staring stubbornly out at the soft, velvety blackness. Headlights drew
nearer and played upon the surging figures of the mob, moving toward
the car. It stopped.
Voices rose; snarling, babbling voices.
“Doc was theah.... Dep’ty sheriff got theah while he was dressin’....
Talked to the doc.... He wouldn’t come. Him an’ the deputy said we’d
have t’ drag him. The deputy pulled a gun.... Hell! It ain’t that
important....”
The sheriff felt sick all over. The deputy had gotten there too late.
Hadn’t understood, maybe. He’d just understood the sheriff didn’t want
the doc to come. It was a bonehead play. If he’d come on with the
doctor, the two of ’em might have kept the mob out of the jail while
the doc lied and said Sam was dying.
* * * * *