The Silent Alarm Part 25

"No, no," said Marion, hanging back. "I-I couldn't."

"That's all right, little girl," the judge rea.s.sured her. "They're just plain mountain folks. I can't understand their actions of yesterday, but that's what we're going over there to find out."

The men in the cabin appeared a little startled at sight of the judge and the girls, but having motioned them to seats around the crude fireplace, they sat there in stoical silence.

"Black John," said the judge in a friendly tone, "I'm told you took this little girl from her home yesterday and carried her away over the mountains."

"I 'low you're right informed, Jedge."

"Don't you know that's kidnapping?"

"You kin name it, Jedge. I ain't much on larnin' nohow."

"Why did you do it?"

"Jedge, it's this way," the black-eyed mountaineer settled himself to explain. "That little gal there is the last of her clan, the Cawoods, the fightenest clan that I reckon ever lived in these here mountings. They fit us and we fit them, and I reckon, Jedge, if'n ther'd been more Cawoods and less Berkharts there wouldn't been any Berkharts left, same's there's only one Cawood left, an' that's little Hallie.

"Jedge," the mountain man paused to stare moodily at the fire, "us folks is plum tired fightin'. 'T'ain't no satisfaction to go out a hoein' corn an' makin' crops on these here rocky hillsides when you know like as not some feller's lying up there in the bresh above you waitin' for to put daylight through you. And Jedge, long's there's a Cawood a-livin' in these here mountings, even a little one like Hallie, there's some one goin' to rise up to shoot and kill us. So, Jedge, we took her an'-

"No, Jedge," he protested as he saw the look of horror on the faces about him, "we didn't aim to kill her. Reckon there ain't no mounting folk anywhar mean as that. But, Jedge, out of the mountings thar's places I've heard tell of, big places whar they keep orphans. Hallie bein' a true orphan, we 'lowed we'd jest take her out thar and give her another name.

She'd grow up and never know she was a Cawood, and not n.o.body else'd know, either, and then thar'd be peace in these here mountings."

For a moment there was silence, then the judge spoke.

"Black John," he said, "you can't make right by doing a wrong. Hallie was not kin to you. You had no right to lay one finger upon her. You believe in G.o.d, don't you?" The mountaineer dropped his head. "G.o.d never told you that men would be raised up to kill your people for Hallie's sake. It was the powers of evil and darkness that told you that. It's not true.

"As for this crime you have committed," he said in a stern voice, "you are accountable to the law. You should perhaps be bound over to the grand jury, but you did the thing in ignorance-your motives were not criminal motives. If those who were wronged are disposed to forgive you, and if you give me your word of honor that you will never molest the child again, I'll do my best to see that you go free."

He turned to Patience and Marion.

"One thing else I want to know," said Marion, her voice husky with emotion as she turned to face Black John. "Why did you seize my friend at the back of Pine Mountain and hold her against her will?"

"That, Jedge," said the mountain man, talking to the judge instead of Marion, "was part and parcel of the same plan. Little Hallie were a stayin' at their cabin then and we thought quite natural we might trade the older girl fer the leetle one that wasn't only just a mounting girl noways."

The judge looked at Marion as much as to say: "That is explained. Shall we hold them?"

Marion frowned. She knew mountain ways and mountain courts, knew how seldom justice was done. She recalled a word Ransom Turner had let fall.

"Reckon a word of honor given by a mountain man's a heap site surer than a jury trial."

"I'll take his word, if he gives it freely," Marion said.

"Black John, do we have your word of honor?"

"Jedge, hit's mighty hard to see through; plumb hard, but I reckon hit's right. I give my word, Jedge."

The judge bowed. Then, followed by the judge, they all filed out of the cabin.

At ten o'clock, in her room at the whipsawed cabin, with great events hanging in the air all about her, Marion closed her weary eyes for a few winks of sleep. Little Hallie slept peacefully beside her.

CHAPTER XVIII THE STRANGE PROCESSION

When Florence awoke next morning at dawn she stared wildly about her for an instant, then settled back luxuriously among the covers.

"Home," she breathed. "Back at the whipsawed cabin!"

She lay there gazing dreamily at the time browned ceiling. Suddenly her gaze fell upon the misplaced board that covered the opening leading to the attic.

At once her mind was filled with all manner of wild speculations. Had Marion, in her absence, thought of some new hiding place in that attic?

Had she found the Confederate gold? Or had Uncle Billie talked too much about the vanished gold? Had some one, with no legal right to the gold, come to the house while everyone was away? Had he climbed to the attic and plundered it?

She found herself all but overcome by a desire to climb up there and look for herself.

"But this day," she said, sitting up wide awake, "this day I have no time for treasure hunting. My business to-day is that of being tried by a jury. And after that,"-her thoughts were bitter,-"after that it is to be my duty to show these mountain folks how gamely a girl from the outside can lose an election."

Strangely enough, at this moment there pa.s.sed through her mind moving pictures of her experience at the back of Pine Mountain.

"The deed for Caleb Powell's land," she whispered. "I wonder when they will have it? Will they have it at all? Will we get our commission?"

"Oh well," she exclaimed, leaping out of bed, "there's no time for such speculation now."

The trial was on. The house was packed. Lacking a town hall, the Justice had selected the schoolhouse for court room.

To Florence the thing was tragic. To be tried by a jury, a jury of men who two months before were utterly unknown to her; to be tried by a people whose children she had been helping to educate, this was tragic indeed. There were faces in the audience which seemed to reflect the tragedy; seamed faces, old before their time; faces of women who had toiled beyond their just lot that their children might have just a little more than they had enjoyed.

There was humor in the situation, too. To be sitting there in the very chair which she had been accustomed to use in her school-work; to be looking into the faces of scores of children, yet instead of directing their work to be listening to the Justice stumbling over the words of the warrant, all this struck her as decidedly odd, a thing to smile about.

Ransom, too, must have seen the humor of it, for as Florence looked his way she surprised a smile lurking around the corners of his mouth.

The jury was called. Florence, studying their faces as they came shambling forward, was surprised and relieved to find there not a single man who was hostile to her; not one of Black Blevens' men was on that jury. She caught her breath as the true meaning of it came to her. George Sergeant, the deputy, was her friend. He had seen to it that she had the proper sort of a jury. A lump came into her throat. It is good, at such a time as this, to know that one has friends. The very fact that she had demanded a jury trial had perhaps saved the day for her.

The details of the case arranged, a lawyer arose to open the case. It was Florence's lawyer, provided not by herself, but by Ransom Turner and his men.

It was a beautiful and wonderful speech that the young lawyer made. A product of the mountain, born and raised far up in the hills, he had been helped to his earlier education by just such a school as the girls had been teaching.

"An outrage! A shame and a blight to Laurel Creek's good name!" he exclaimed eloquently. "You all know what these summer schools have meant to us and to our children. Good hearted, generous people of education and refinement come to our mountains to help our children, and how do we repay them? Arrest them for carrying concealed weapons! Arrest a woman for that! And what was it that this lady did? She put a twenty-two pistol in her pocket after she failed to shoot a squirrel. A pistol, did I say?

Really a little rifle. A long barrel and a handle. Attach a stock to it and it's a rifle.

"Concealed weapons!" his voice was filled with scorn. "You couldn't kill a man with that! A twenty-two! Concealed weapons! If I were to search this crowd to-day I could find a hundred deadlier weapons on the persons who sit before me!" There was a sudden shuffling of the uneasy feet of startled mountaineers.

"Concealed weapons!" he went on. "I've a more deadly one in my own pocket!" He drew a large clasp knife from his pocket and opened it. "I could kill you quicker with that than with a twenty-two." He put the knife back in his pocket.

"And yet we arrest a woman, a girl really, who has come among us to help us. As a reward we arrest her! Will you honorable jurymen place a blight on the name of such a one by saying she is guilty of a crime? Something tells me you will not."

As the young lawyer sat down there was a stir in the room, a whispering that came near to applause, but the bronze faces of the jurymen never changed. Nor had they changed when, after hearing the Justice give his reasons why the girl should be found guilty, they left the room to retire to the shade of a distant beach tree.