Winter Evening Tales

He offered to return to camp and report "all right," and the offer was accepted; but, at the first turn, he rode away into the darkness of a belt of timber. The cayotes howled in the distance; there was a rush of unclean night birds above him, and the growling of panther cats in the underwood. But in his soul there was a terror and a darkness that made all natural terrors of small account. His own hands were hateful to him. He moaned out loudly like a man in an agony. He measured in every moments' space the height from which he had fallen; the blessings from which he must be an outcast, if by any means he might escape the shameful punishment of his deed. He remembered at that hour his father's love, the love that had so finely asserted itself when the occasion for it came. Lulu's tenderness and beauty, the hope of home and children, the respect of his fellow-men, all sacrificed for a moment's passionate revenge. He stood face to face with himself, and, dropping the reins, cowered down full of terror and grief at the future which he had evoked. Within hopeless sight of Hope and Love and Home, he was silent for hours gazing despairingly after the life which had sailed by him, and not daring—

"—to search through what sad maze,Thenceforth his incommunicable waysFollow the feet of death."

Chapter II

"—and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." James i. 15.

Blessed are they who have seen Nature in those rare, ineffable moments when she appears to be asleep—when the stars, large and white, bend stilly over the dreaming earth, and not a breath of wind stirs leaf or flower. On such a night James Lorimer sat upon his south verandah smoking; and his niece Lulu, white and motionless as the magnolia flowers above her, mused the hour away beside him. There were little ebony squads of negroes huddled together around the doors of their quarters, but they also were singularly quiet. An angel of silence had passed by no one was inclined to disturb the tranquil calm of the dreaming earth.

There is nothing good in this life which Time does not improve. In ten days the better feelings which had led James Lorimer to seek his son in the path of moral and physical danger had grown as Divine seed does grow. This very night, in the scented breathless quiet, he was longing for David's return, and forming plans through which the future might atone for the past. Gradually the weary negroes went into the cabins, rolled themselves in their blankets and fell into that sound, dreamless sleep which is the compensation of hard labor. Only Lulu watched and thought with him.

Suddenly she stood up and listened. There was a footstep in the avenue, and she knew it. But why did it linger, and what dreary echo of sorrow was there in it?

"That is David's step, uncle; but what is the matter? Is he sick?"

Then they both saw the young man coming slowly through the gloom, and the shadow of some calamity came steadily on before him. Lulu went to the top of the long flight of white steps, and put out her hands to greet him. He motioned her away with a woeful and positive gesture, and stood with hopeless yet half defiant attitude before his father.

In a moment all the new tenderness was gone.

In a voice stern and scornful he asked, "Well, sir, what is the matter? What hae ye been doing now?"

"I have shot Whaley!"

The words were rather breathed than spoken, but they were distinctly audible. The father rose and faced his wretched son.

Lulu drew close to him, and asked, in a shocked whisper, "Dead?"

"Dead!"

"But you had a good reason, David; I know you had. He would have shot you?—it was in self-defence?—it was an accident? Speak, dear!"

"He called me a coward, and—"

"You shot him! Then you are a coward, sir!" said Lorimer, sternly; "and having made yourself fit for the gallows, you are a double coward to come here and force upon me the duty of arresting you. Put down your rifle, sir!"

Lulu uttered a long low wail. "Oh, David, my love! why did you come here? Did you hope for pity or help in his heart? And what can I do Davie, but suffer with you?" But she drew his face down and kissed it with a solemn tenderness that taught the wretched man, in one moment, all the blessedness of a woman's devotion, and all the misery that the indulgence of his ungovernable temper had caused him.

"We will hae no more heroics, Lulu. As a magistrate and a citizen it is my duty to arrest a murderer on his ain confession."

"Your duty!" she answered, in a passion of scorn. "Had you done your duty to David in the past years, this duty would not have been to do. Your duty or anything belonging to yourself, has always been your sole care. Wrong Davie, wrong me, slay love outright, but do your duty, and stand well with the world and yourself! Uncle, you are a dreadful Christian!"

"How dare you judge me, Lulu? Go to your own room at once!"

"David, dearest, farewell! Fly!—you will get no pity here. Fly!"

"Sit down, sir, and do not attempt to move!"

"I am hungry, thirsty, weary and wretched, and at your mercy, father. Do as you will with me." And he laid his rifle upon the table.

Lorimer looked at the hopeless figure that almost fell into the chair beside him, and his first feeling was one of mingled scorn and pity.

"How did it happen? Tell me the truth. I want neither excuses nor deceptions."

"I have no desire to make them. There was a 'run,' just as my time was out. Whaley, in an insolent manner, ordered me to help turn the leaders. I did not move. He called me a coward, and taunted me with my Spanish blood—it was my dear mother's."

"That is it," answered Lorimer, with an anger all the more terrible for its restraint; "it is the Spanish blood wi' its gasconade and foolish pride."

"Father! You have a right to give me up to the hangman; but you have no right to insult me."

The next moment he fell senseless at his father's feet. It was the collapse of consciousness under excessive physical exhaustion and mental anguish; but Lorimer, who had never seen a man in such extremity, believed it to be death. A tumult of emotions rushed over him, but assistance was evidently the first duty, and he hastened for it. First he sent the housekeeper Cassie to her young master, then he went to the quarters to arouse Plato.

When he returned, Lulu and Cassie were kneeling beside the unconscious youth. "You have murdered him!" said Lulu, bitterly; and for a moment he felt something of the remorseful agony which had driven the criminal at his feet into a short oblivion. But very soon there was a slight reaction, and the father was the first to see it. "He has only fainted; bring some wine here!" Then he remembered the weakness of the voice which had said, "I am hungry, and thirsty, and weary and wretched."

When David opened his eyes again his first glance was at his father. There was something in that look that smote the angry man to his heart of hearts. He turned away, motioning Plato to follow him. But even when he had reached his own room and shut his door, he could not free himself from the influence evoked by that look of sorrowful reproach.

Plato stood just within the door, nervously dangling his straw hat. He was evidently balancing some question in his own mind, and the uncertainty gave a queer restlessness to every part of his body.

"Plato, you are to watch the young man down-stairs; he is not to be allowed to leave the house."

"Yes, sar."

"He has committed a great crime, and he must abide the consequences."

No answer.

"You understand that, Plato?"

"Dunno, sar. I mighty sinful ole man myself. Dunno bout de consequences."

"Go, and do as I bid you!"

When he was alone he rose slowly and locked his door. He wanted to do right, but he was like a man in the fury and darkness of a great tempest: he could not see any road at all. There was a Bible on his dressing-table, and he opened it; but the verses mingled together, and the sense of everything seemed to escape him. The hand of the Great Father was stretched out to him in the dark, but he could not find it. He knew that at the bottom of his heart lay a wish that David would escape from justice. He knew that a selfish shame about his own fair character mingled with his father's love; his motives and feelings were so mixed that he did not dare to bring them, in their pure truthfulness, to the feet of God; for as yet he did not understand that "like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him;" he thought of the Divine Being as one so jealous for His own rights and honor that He would have the human heart a void, so that he might reign there supremely. So all that terrible night he stood smitten and astonished on a threshold he could not pass.

In another room the question was being in a measure solved for him. Cassie brought in meat and bread and wine, and David ate, and felt refreshed. Then the love of life returned, and the terror of a shameful death; and he laid his hand upon his rifle and looked round to see what chance of escape his father had left him. Plato stood at the door, Lulu sat by his side, holding his hand. On her face there was an expression of suffering, at once defiant and despairing—a barren suffering, without hope. They had come to that turn on their unhappy road when they had to bid each other "Farewell!" It was done very sadly, and with few words.

"You must go now, beloved."

He held her close to his heart and kissed her solemnly and silently. The next moment she turned on him from the open door a white, anguished face. Then he was alone with Plato.

"Plato, I must go now. Will you saddle the brown mare for me?"

"She am waiting, Massa David. I tole Cassie to get her ready, and some bread and meat, and dis, Massa Davie, if you'll 'blige ole Plato." Then he laid down a rude bag of buckskin, holding the savings of his lifetime.

"How much is there, Plato?"

"Four hundred dollars, sar. Sorry it am so little."

"It was for your freedom, Plato."

"I done gib dat up, Massa Davie. I'se too ole now to git de rest. Ef you git free, dat is all I want."

They went quietly out together. It was not long after midnight. The brown mare stood ready saddled in the shadow, and Cassie stood beside her with a small bag, holding a change of linen and some cooked food. The young man mounted quickly, grasped the kind hands held out to him, and then rode away into the darkness. He went softly at first, but when he reached the end of the avenue at a speed which indicated his terror and his mental suffering.

Cassie and Plato watched him until he became an indistinguishable black spot upon the prairie; then they turned wearily towards the cabins. They had seen and shared the long sorrow and discontent of the household; they hardly expected anything but trouble in some form or other. Both were also thinking of the punishment they were likely to receive; for James Lorimer never failed to make an example of evil-doers; he would hardly be disposed to pass over their disobedience.

Early in the morning Plato was called by his master. There was little trace of the night of mental agony the latter had passed. He was one of those complete characters who join to perfect physical health a mind whose fibres do not easily show the severest strain.

"Tell Master David to come here."

"Massa David, sar! Massa David done gone sar!" The old man's lips were trembling, but otherwise his nervous restlessness was over. He looked his master calmly in the face.

"Did I not tell you to stop him?"

"Ef de Lord in heaven want him stopped, Massa James, He'll send the messenger—Plato could not do it!"

"How did he go?"

"On de little brown mare—his own horse done broke all up."

"How much money did you give him?"

"Money, sar?"

"How much? Tell the truth."

"Four hundred dollars."

"That will do. Tell Cassie I want my breakfast."

At breakfast he glanced at Lulu's empty chair, but said nothing. In the house all was as if no great sin and sorrow had darkened its threshold and left a stain upon its hearthstone. The churning and cleaning was going on as usual. Only Cassie was quieter, and Lulu lay, white and motionless, in the little vine-shaded room that looked too cool and pretty for grief to enter. The unhappy father sat still all day, pondering many things that he had not before thought of. Every footfall made his heart turn sick, but the night came, and there was no further bad news.

On the second day he went into Lulu's room, hoping to say a word of comfort to her. She listened apathetically, and turned her face to the wall with a great sob. He began to feel some irritation in the atmosphere of misery which surrounded him. It was very hard to be made so wretched for another's sin. The thought in an instant became a reproach. Was he altogether innocent? The second and third days passed; he began to be sure then that David must have reached a point beyond the probability of pursuit.

On the fourth day he went to the cotton field. He visited the overseer's house, he spent the day in going over accounts and making estimates. He tried to forget that something had happened which made life appear a different thing. In the grey, chill, misty evening he returned home. The negroes were filing down the long lane before him, each bearing their last basket of cotton—all of them silent, depressed with their weariness, and intensely sensitive to the melancholy influence of the autumn twilight.

Lorimer did not care to pass them. He saw them, one by one, leave their cotton at the ginhouse, and trail despondingly off to their cabins. Then he rode slowly up to his own door. A man sat on the verandah smoking. At the sight of him his heart fell fathoms deep.

"Good evening." He tried to give his voice a cheerful welcoming sound, but he could not do it; and the visitor's attitude was not encouraging.

"Good evening, Lorimer. I'm right sorry to tell you that you will be wanted on some unpleasant business very early to-morrow morning."

He tried to answer, but utterly failed; his tongue was as dumb as his soul was heavy. He only drew a chair forward and sat down.

"Fact is your son is in a tighter place than any man would care for. I brought him up to Sheriff Gillelands' this afternoon. Perhaps he can make it out a case of 'justifiable homicide'—hope he can. He's about as likely a young man as I ever saw."

Still no answer.

"Well, Lorimer, I think you're right. Talking won't help things, and may make them a sight worse. You'll be over to Judge Lepperts' in the morning?—say about ten o'clock."

"Yes. Will you have some supper?"

"No; this is not hungry work. My pipe is more satisfactory under the circumstances. I'll have to saddle up, too. There's others to see yet. Is there any one particular you'd like on the jury?"

"No. You must do your duty, Sheriff."

He heard him gallop away, and stood still, clasping and unclasping his hands in a maze of anguish. David at Sheriff Gillelands'! David to be tried for murder in the morning! What could he do? If David had not confessed to the shooting of Whaley, would he be compelled to give his evidence? Surely, conscience would not require so hard a duty of him.

At length he determined to go and see David before he decided upon the course he ought to take. The sheriff's was only about three miles distant. He rode over there at once. His son, with travel-stained clothes and blood-shot hopeless eyes, looked up to see him enter. His heart was full of a great love, but it was wronged, even at that hour, by an irritation that would first and foremost assert itself. Instead of saying, "My dear, dear lad!" the lament which was in his heart, he said, "So this is the end of it, David?"

"Yes. It is the end."

"You ought not to have run away."

"No. I ought to have let you surrender me to justice; that would have put you all right."

"I wasna thinking o' that. A man flying from justice is condemned by the act."

"It would have made no matter. There is only one verdict and one end possible."

"Have you then confessed the murder?"

He awaited the answer in an agony. It came with a terrible distinctness. "Whaley lived thirty hours. He told. His brother-in-law has gone on with the cattle. Four of the drivers are come back as witnesses. They are in the house."

"But you have not yourself confessed?"

"Yes. I told Sheriff Gillelands I shot the man. If I had not done so you would; I knew that. I have at least spared you the pain and shame of denouncing your own son!"

"Oh, David, David! I would not. My dear lad, I would not! I would hae gane to the end o' the world first. Why didna you trust me?"

"How could I, father?"

He let the words drop wearily, and covered his face with his hands. After a pause, he said, "Poor Lulu! Don't tell her if you can help it, until—all is over. How glad I am this day that my mother is dead!"

The wretched father could endure the scene no longer. He went into the outer room to find out what hope of escape remained for his son. The sheriff was full of pity, and entered readily into a discussion of David's chances. But he was obliged to point out that they were extremely small. The jury and the judge were all alike cattle men; their sympathies were positively against everything likely to weaken the discipline necessary in carrying large herds of cattle safely across the continent. In the moment of extremest danger, David had not only refused assistance, but had shot his employer.

"He called him a coward, and you'll admit that's a vera aggravating name."

The sheriff readily admitted that under any ordinary circumstances in Texas that epithet would justify a murder; "but," he added, "most any Texan would say he was a coward to stand still and see eight thousand head of cattle on the stampede. You'll excuse me, Lorimer, I'd say so myself."

He went home again and shut himself in his room to think. But after many hours, he was just as far as ever from any coherent decision. Justice! Justice! Justice! The whole current of his spiritual and mental constitution ran that road. Blood for blood; a life for a life; it was meet and right, and he acknowledged it with bleeding heart and streaming eyes. But, clear and distinct above the tumult of this current, he heard something which made him cry out with an equally unhappy father of old, "Oh, Absalom! My son, my son Absalom!"

Then came the accuser and boldly told him that he had neglected his duty, and driven his son into the way of sin and death; and that the seeds sown in domestic bickering and unkindness had only brought forth their natural fruit. The scales fell from his eyes; all the past became clear to him. His own righteousness was dreadful in his sight. He cried out with his whole soul, "God be merciful! God be merciful!"

The darkest despairs are the most silent. All the night long he was only able to utter that one heartbroken cry for pity and help. At the earliest daylight he was with his son. He was amazed to find him calm, almost cheerful. "The worst is over father," he said. "I have done a great wrong; I acknowledge the justice of the punishment, and am willing to suffer it."

"But after death! Oh, David, David—afterward!"

"I shall dare to hope—for Christ also has died, the just for the unjust."

Then the father, with a solemn earnestness, spoke to his son of that eternity whose shores his feet were touching. At this hour he would shirk no truth; he would encourage no false hope. And David listened; for this side of his father's character he had always had great respect, and in those first hours of remorse following the murder, not the least part of his suffering had been the fearful looking forward to the Divine vengeance which he could never fly from. But there had been One with him that night, One who is not very far from us at any time; and though David had but tremblingly understood His voice, and almost feared to accept its comfort, he was in those desperate circumstances when men cannot reason and philosophize, when nothing remains for them but to believe.

"Dinna get by the truth, my dear lad; you hae committed a great sin, there is nae doubt o' that."

"But God's mercy, I trust, is greater."

"And you hae nothing to bring him from a' the years o' your life! Oh, David, David!"

"I know," he answered sadly. "But neither had the dying thief. He only believed. Father, this is the sole hope and comfort left me now. Don't take it from me."

Lorimer turned away weeping; yes, and praying, too, as men must pray when they stand powerless in the stress of terrible sorrows. At noon the twelve men summoned dropped in one by one, and the informal court was opened. David Lorimer admitted the murder, and explained the long irritation and the final taunt which had produced it. The testimony of the returned drovers supplemented the tragedy. If there was any excuse to be made, it lay in the disgraceful epithet applied to David and the scornful mention of his mother's race.

There was, however, an unfavorable feeling from the first. The elder Lorimer, with his stern principles and severe manners, was not a popular man. David's proud, passionate temper had made him some active enemies; and there was not a man on the jury who did not feel as the sheriff had honestly expressed himself regarding David's conduct at the moment of the stampede. It touched all their prejudices and their interests very nearly; not one of them was inclined to blame Whaley for calling a man a coward who would not answer the demand for help at such an imperative moment.

As to the Spanish element, it had always been an offence to Texans. There were men on the jury whose fathers had died fighting it; beside, there was that unacknowledged but positive contempt which ever attaches itself to a race that has been subjugated. Long before the form of a trial was over, David had felt the hopelessness of hope, and had accepted his fate. Not so his father. He pleaded with all his soul for his son's life. But he touched no heart there. The jury had decided on the death-sentence before they left their seats.

And in that locality, and at that time, there was no delay in carrying it out. It would be inconvenient to bring together again a sufficient number of witnesses, and equally inconvenient to guard a prisoner for any length of time. David was to die at sunset.

Three hours yet remained to the miserable father. He threw aside all pride and all restraint. Remorse and tenderness wrung his heart. But these last hours had a comfort no others in their life ever had. What confessions of mutual faults were made! What kisses and forgivenesses were exchanged! At last the two poor souls who had dwelt in the chill of mistakes and ignorance knew that they loved each other. Sometimes the Lord grants such sudden unfoldings to souls long closed. They are of those royal compassions which astonish even the angels.

When his time was nearly over, David pushed a piece of paper toward his father. "It is my last request," he said, looking into his face with eyes whose entreaty was pathetic. "You must grant it, father, hard as it is."

Lorimer's hand trembled as he took the paper, but his face turned pale as ashes when he read the contents.

"I canna, I canna do it," he whispered.

"Yes, you will, father. It is the last favor I shall ask of you."

The request was indeed a bitter one; so bitter that David had not dared to voice it. It was this—

"Father, be my executioner. Do not let me be hung. The rope is all I dread in death; ere it touch me, let your rifle end my life."

For a few moments Lorimer sat like a man turned to stone. Then he rose and went to the jury. They were sitting together under some mulberry trees, smoking. Naturally silent, they had scarcely spoken since their verdict. Grave, fierce men, they were far from being cruel; they had no pleasure in the act which they believed to be their duty.

Lorimer went from one to the other and made known his son's request. He pleaded, "That as David had shot Whaley, justice would be fully satisfied in meting out the same death to the murderer as the victim."

But one man, a ranchero of great influence and wealth, answered that he must oppose such a request. It was the rope, he thought, made the punishment. He hoped no Texan feared a bullet. A clean, honorable death like that was for a man who had never wronged his manhood. Every rascally horse thief or Mexican assassin would demand a shot if they were given a precedent. And arguments that would have been essentially false in some localities had a compelling weight in that one. The men gravely nodded their heads in assent, and Lorimer knew that any further pleading was in vain. Yet when he returned to his son, he clasped his hand and looked into his eyes, and David understood that his request would be granted.