And thus was begun that historical lynching in the Tennessee Valley--a tragedy which well might have remained unwritten had it not fallen into the woof of this story.

A white man had been killed for a negro--that was enough.

It is true the man was attempting to commit murder in the face of the law of the land; and in attempting it had shot the representative of the law. It is true, also, that he had no grievance, being one of several hundred law-breakers bent on murder. This, too, made no difference; they neither thought nor cared;--for mobs, being headless, do not think; and being soulless, do not suffer.

They had failed only for lack of a leader.

But now they had a leader, and a mob with a leader is a dangerous thing.

That leader was Richard Travis.

It was after midnight when he rode up on the scene. Before he arrived, Jud Carpenter had aroused the mob to do its first fury, and still held them, now doubly vengeful and shouting to be led against the jail. But to storm a jail they needed a braver man than Jud Carpenter. And they found him in Richard Travis--especially Richard Travis in the terrible mood, the black despair which had come upon him that night.

Why did he come? He could not say. In him had surged two great forces that night--the force of evil and the force of good. Twice had the good overcome--now it was the evil's turn, and like one hypnotized, he was led on.

He sat his horse among them, pale and calm, but with a cruel instinct flashing in his eyes. At least, so Jud Carpenter interpreted the mood which lay upon him; but no one knew the secret workings of this man's heart, save G.o.d.

He had come to them haggard and blanched and with a nameless dread, his arm tied up where the dog's fang had been buried in his flesh, his heart bitter in the thought of the death that was his. Already he felt the deadly virus pulsing through his veins. A hundred times in the short hour that had pa.s.sed he suffered death--death beginning with the gripping throat, the shortened breath, the foaming mouth, the spasm!

He jerked in the saddle--that spasmodic chill of the nerves,--and he grew white and terribly silent at the thought of it--the death that was his!

Was his! And then he thought: "No, there shall be another and quicker way to die. A braver way--like a Travis--with my boots on--my boots on--and not like a mad-dog tied to a stake.

"Besides--Alice--Alice!"

She had gone out of his life. Could such a thing be and he live to tell it? Alice--love--ambition--the future--life! Alice, hazel-eyed and glorious, with hair the smell of which filled his soul with perfume as from the stars. She who alone uplifted him--she another's, and that other Tom Travis!

Tom Travis--returned and idealized--with him, the joint heir of The Gaffs.

And that mad-dog--that d.a.m.ned mad-dog! And if perchance he was saved--if that virus was sucked out of his veins, it was she--Helen!

"This is the place to die," he said grimly--"here with my boots on.

To die like a Travis and unravel this thing called life. Unravel it to the end of the thread and know if it ends there, is snapped, is broken or--

"Or--my G.o.d," he cried aloud, "I never knew what those two little letters meant before--not till I face them this way, on the Edge of Things!"

He gathered the mob together and led them against the jail--with hoots and shouts and curses; with flaming torches, and crow-bars, with axes and old guns.

"Lynch her--lynch the old witch! and hang that devil Conway with her!" was the shout.

In front of the jail they stopped, for a man stood at the door. His left arm was in a sling, but in his right hand gleamed something that had proved very deadly before. And he stood there as he had stood in the edge of the wood, and the bonfires and torches of the mob lit up more clearly the deadly pale face, set and more determined than before.

For as he stood, pale and silent, the shaft of a terrible pain,--of broken bone and lacerated muscle--twinged and twitched his arm, and to smother it and keep from crying out he gripped bloodlessly--nervously--the stock of his pistol saying over and over:

"I am a Conway again--a man again!"

And so standing he defied them and they halted, like sheep at the door of the shambles. The sheriff had flown, and Conway alone stood between the frenzied mob and the old woman who had given her all for him.

He could hear her praying within--an uncanny mixture of faith and miracle--of faith which saw as Paul saw, and which expected angels to come and break down her prison doors. And after praying she would break out into a song, the words of which nerved the lone man who stood between her and death:

"'I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.

Do not detain me, for I am going To where the streamlets are ever flowing.

I'm a pilgrim--and I'm a stranger I can tarry--I can tarry but a night.'"

And now the bonfire burned brighter, lighting up the scene--the shambling stores around the jail on the public square, the better citizens making appeals in vain for law and order, the shouting, fool-hardy mob, waiting for Richard Travis to say the word, and he sitting among them pale, and terribly silent with something in his face they had never seen there before.

Nor would he give the command. He had nothing against Edward Conway--he did not wish to see him killed.

And the mob did not attack, although they cursed and bluffed, because each one of them knew it meant death--death to some one of them, and that one might be--I!

Between life and death "I" is a bridge that means it all.

A stone wall ran around the front of the jail. A small gate opened into the jail-yard. At the jail door, covering that opening, stood Edward Conway.

They tried parleying with him, but he would have none of it.

"Go back--" he said, "I am the sheriff here--I am the law. The man who comes first into that gate will be the first to die."

In ten minutes they made their attack despite the commands of their leader, who still sat his horse on the public square, pale and with a bitter conflict raging in his breast.

With shouts and curses and a headlong rush they went. Pistol bullets flew around Conway's head and scattered brick dust and mortar over him. Torches gleamed through the dark crowd as stars amid fast flying clouds in a March night. But through it all every man of them heard the ringing warning words:

"Stop at the gateway--stop at the dead line!"

Right at it they rushed and crowded into it like cattle--shooting, cursing, throwing stones.

Then two fell dead, blocking the gateway. Two more, wounded, with screams of pain which threw the others into that indescribable panic which comes to all mobs in the death-pinch, staggered back carrying the mob with them.

Safe from the bullets, they became frenzied.

The town trembled with their fury.

All order was at an end.

And Edward Conway stood, behind a row of cotton bales, in the jail-yard, covering still the little gateway, and the biting pain in his shoulder had a companion pain in his side, where a pistol ball had ploughed through, but he forgot it as he slipped fresh cartridges into the chambers of his pistol and heard again the chant which came from out the jail window, like a ghost-voice from the clouds:

"Of that City, to which I journey, My Redeemer, my Redeemer is the light.

There is no sorrow, nor any sighing, Nor any tears there, nor any dying..., I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger, I can tarry--I can tarry but a night."

At a long distance they shot at Conway,--they hooted, jeered, cursed him, but dared not come closer, for he had breast-worked himself behind some cotton-bales in the yard, and they knew he could still shoot.

Then they decided to batter down the stone wall first--to make an opening they could rush through, and not be blocked in the deadly gateway.

An hour pa.s.sed, and torches gleamed everywhere. Attacking the wall farther down, they soon had it torn away. They could now get to him.

It was a perilous position, and Conway knew it. Help--he must have it--help to protect his flank while he shot in front. If not, he would die soon, and the law with him.

He looked around him--but there was no solution. Then he felt that death was near, for the mob now hated him more than they did the prisoner. They seemed to have forgotten her, for all their cry now was: