The Bondboy Part 22

"Well, Bill, if you think it's necessary, all right," said he.

"Form of law demands it," said Sol.

"But you might wait and see what the coroner thinks about it," suggested Joe.

"Perliminaries," said Greening in his deep way.

Then the question of what to do with the prisoner until morning arose.

Joe pointed out that they could make no disposition of him, except to hold him in custody, until the coroner had held an inquest into the case and a conclusion had been reached by the jury. He suggested that they allow him to go to bed and get some needed sleep.

That seemed to be a very sensible suggestion, according to Bill's view of it. But Sol didn't know whether it would be a regular proceeding and in strict accord with the forms of law. Indeed, he was of the opinion, after deliberating a while, that it would weaken the case materially. He was strongly in favor of handcuffs, or, in the absence of regulation manacles, a half-inch rope.

After a great deal of discussion, during which Frost kept his hand officiously on Joe's shoulder, it was agreed that the prisoner should be allowed to go to bed. He was to be lodged in the spare room upstairs, the one lately occupied by Morgan. Frost escorted him to it, and locked the door.

"Is they erry winder in that room?" asked Sol, when Bill came back.

"Reckon so," said Frost, starting nervously. "I didn't look."

"Better see," said Sol, getting up to investigate.

They went round to the side of the house. Yes, there was a window, and it was wide open.

But any doubt that the prisoner might have escaped through it was soon quieted by the sound of his snore. Joe had thrown himself across the bed, boots and all, and was already shoulder-deep in sleep. They decided that, at daylight, Sol's son should ride to the county-seat, seven miles distant, and notify the coroner.

During the time they spent between Joe's retirement and daybreak, Sol improved the minutes by arraigning, convicting, and condemning Joe for the murder of old Isom. He did it so impressively that he had Constable Frost on edge over the tremendous responsibility that rested on his back. Bill was in a sweat, although the night was cool. He tiptoed around, listening, spying, prying; he stood looking up at Joe's window until his neck ached; he explored the yard for hidden weapons and treasure, and he peered and poked with a rake-handle into shrubbery and vines.

They could hear the women upstairs talking once in a while, and now and again they caught the sound of a piteous moan.

"She ain't seen him," said Sol; "I wouldn't let her come down. She may not be in no condition to look on a muss like that, her a young woman and only married a little while."

Bill agreed on that, as he agreed on every hypothesis which Sol propounded out of his wisdom, now that his official heat had been raised.

"If I hadn't got here when I did he'd 'a' skinned out with all of that money," said Sol. "He was standin' there with his hat in his hand, all ready to scoop it up."

"How'd he come to go after me?" asked Bill.

"Well, folks don't always do things on their own accord," said Sol, giving Bill an unmistakable look.

"Oh, that was the way of it," nodded Bill. "I thought it was funny if he----"

"He knowed he didn't have a ghost of a chance to git away between me and you," said Sol.

Morning came, and with it rode Sol's son to fetch the coroner.

Sol had established himself in the case so that he would lose very little glory in the day's revelations, and there remained one pleasant duty yet which he proposed to take upon himself. That was nothing less than carrying the news of the tragedy and Joe's arrest to Mrs. Newbolt in her lonely home at the foot of the hill.

Sol's son spread the news as he rode through the thin morning to the county-seat, drawing up at barn-yard gates, hailing the neighbors on the way to their fields, pouring the amazing story into the avid ears of all who met him. Sol carried the story in the opposite direction, trotting his horse along full of leisurely importance and the enjoyment of the distinction which had fallen on him through his early connection with the strange event. When they heard it, men turned back from their fields and hastened to the Chase farm, to peer through the kitchen window and shock their toil-blunted senses in the horror of the scene.

Curiosity is stronger than thrift in most men, and those of that community were no better fortified against it than others of their kind.

Long before Sol Greening's great lubberly son reached the county-seat, a crowd had gathered at the farmstead of Isom Chase. Bill Frost, now bristling with the dignity of his official power, moved among them soberly, the object of great respect as the living, moving embodiment of the law.

Yesterday he was only Bill Frost, a tenant of rented land, filling an office that was only a name; this morning he was Constable Bill Frost, with the power and dignity of the State of Missouri behind him, guarding a house of mystery and death. Law and authority had transformed him overnight, settling upon him as the spirit used to come upon the prophets in the good old days.

Bill had only to stretch out his arm, and strong men would fall back, pale and awed, away from the wall of the house; he had but to caution them in a low word to keep hands off everything, to be instantly obeyed.

They drew away into the yard and stood in low-voiced groups, the process of thought momentarily stunned by this terrible thing.

"Ain't it awful?" a graybeard would whisper to a stripling youth.

"Ain't it terrible?" would come the reply.

"Well, well, well! Old Isom!"

That was as far as any of them could go. Then they would walk softly, scarcely breathing, to the window and peep in again.

Joe, unhailed and undisturbed, was spinning out his sleep. Mrs. Greening brought coffee and refreshments for the young widow from her own kitchen across the road, and the sun rose and drove the mists out of the hollows, as a shepherd drives his flocks out to graze upon the hill.

As Sol Greening hitched his horse to the Widow Newbolt's fence, he heard her singing with long-drawn quavers and lingering semibreves:

_There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins...._

She appeared at the kitchen door, a pan in her hand, a flock of expectant chickens craning their necks to see what she had to offer, at the instant that Sol came around the corner of the house. She all but let the pan fall in her amazement, and the song was cut off between her lips in the middle of a word, for it was not more than six o'clock, uncommonly early for visitors.

"Mercy me, Sol Greening, you give me an awful jump!" said she.

"Well, I didn't aim to," said Sol, turning over in his mind the speech that he had drawn up in the last uninterrupted stage of his journey over.

Mrs. Newbolt looked at him sharply, turning her head a little with a quick, pert movement, not unlike one of her hens.

"Is anybody sick over your way?" she asked.

She could not account for the early visit in any other manner. People commonly came for her at all hours of the day and night when there was somebody sick and in need of a herb-wise nurse. She had helped a great many of the young ones of that community into the world, and she had eased the pains of many old ones who were quitting it. So she thought that Greening's visit must have something to do with either life or death.

"No, n.o.body just azackly sick," dodged Greening.

"Well, laws my soul, you make a mighty mystery over it! What's the matter--can't you talk?"

"But I can't say, Missis Newbolt, that everybody's just azackly well,"

said he.

"Some of your folks?"

"No, not none of mine," said Sol.

"Then whose?" she inquired impatiently.

"Isom's," said he.

"You don't mean my Joe?" she asked slowly, a shadow of pain drawing her face.