Jack Bracken stood alone on the barricade, shoving more cartridges into his pistol chambers.

The boy, blinded, weeping, hot with a burning revenge, stumbled and fell twice over dead men lying near the gateway. Then he crawled along over them under cover of the fence, and kneeling within twenty feet of the gate, fired at the great calm figure who had driven the mob back, and now stood reloading.

Jack did not see the boy till he felt the ball crush into his side.

Then all the old, desperate, revengeful instinct of the outlaw leaped into his eyes as he quickly turned his unerring pistol on the object from whence the flash came. Never had he aimed so accurately, so carefully, for he felt his own life going out, and this--this was his last shot--to kill.

But the object kneeling among the dead arose with a smile of revengeful triumph and stood up calmly under the aim of the great pistol, his fair hair flung back, his face lit up with the bravery of all the Travises as he shouted:

"Take that--d.a.m.n you--from a Travis!"

And when Jack saw and understood, a smile broke through his bloodshot, vengeful eyes as starlight falls on muddy waters, and he turned away his death-seeking aim, and his mouth trembled as he said:

"Why--it's--it's the Little 'Un! I cudn't kill him--" and he clutched at the cotton-bale as he went down, falling--and Captain Tom grasped him, letting him down gently.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ATONEMENT

And now no one stood between the prisoner and death but the old preacher and the tall man in the uniform of a Captain of Artillery.

And death it meant to all of them, defenders as well as prisoners, for the mob had increased in numbers as in fury. Friends, kindred, brothers, fathers--even mothers and sisters of the dead were there, bitter in the thought that their dead had been murdered--white men, for one old negress.

In their fury they did not think it was the law they themselves were murdering. The very name of the law was now hateful to them--the law that had killed their people.

Slowly, surely, but with grim deadliness they laid their plans--this time to run no risk of failure.

There was a stillness solemn and all-pervading. And from the window of the jail came again in wailing uncanny notes:--

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

It swept over the mob, frenzied now to the stillness of a white heat, like a challenge to battle, like the flaunt of a red flag. Their dead lay all about the gate of the rock fence, stark and still. Their wounded were few--for Jack Bracken did not wound. They saw them all--dead--lying out there dead--and they were willing to die themselves for the blood of the old woman--a negro for whom white men had been killed.

But their wrath now took another form. It was the wrath of coolness.

They had had enough of the other kind. To rush again on those bales of cotton doubly protected behind a rock fence, through one small gate, commanded by the fire of such marksmen as lay there, was not to be thought of.

They would burn the jail over the heads of its defenders and kill them as they were uncovered. A hundred men would fire the jail from the rear, a hundred more with guns would shoot in front.

It was Jud Carpenter who planned it, and soon oil and saturated paper and torches were prepared.

"We are in for it, Bishop," said Captain Tom, as he saw the preparation; "this is worse than Franklin, because there we could protect our rear."

He leaped up on his barricade, tall and splendid, and called to them quietly and with deadly calm:

"Go to your homes, men--go! But if you will come, know that I fought for my country's laws from Shiloh to Franklin, and I can die for them here!"

Then he took from over his heart a small silken flag, spangled with stars and the blood-splotches of his father who fell in Mexico, and he shook it out and flung it over his barricade, saying cheerily: "I am all right for a fight now, Bishop. But oh, for just one of my guns--just one of my old Parrots that I had last week at Franklin!"

The old man, praying on his knees behind his barricade, said:

"Twelve years ago, Cap'n Tom, twelve years. Not last week."

The mob had left Richard Travis for dead, and in the fury of their defeat had thought no more of him. But now, the loss of blood, the cool night air revived him. He sat up, weak, and looked around. Everywhere bonfires burned. Men were running about. He heard their talk and he knew all. He was shot through the left lung, so near to his heart that, as he felt it, he wondered how he had escaped.

He knew it by the labored breathing, by the blood that ran down and half filled his left boot. But his was a const.i.tution of steel--an athlete, a hunter, a horseman, a man of the open. The bitterness of it all came back to him when he found he was not dead as he had hoped--as he had made Jack Bracken shoot to do.

"To die in bed at last," he said, "like a monk with liver complaint--or worse still--my G.o.d, like a mad dog, unless--unless--her lips--Helen!"

He lay quite still on the soft gra.s.s and looked up at the stars. How comfortable he was! He felt around.

A boy's overcoat was under him--a little round-about, wadded up, was his pillow.

He smiled--touched: "What a man he will make--the brave little devil!

Oh, if I can live to tell him he is mine, that I married his mother secretly--that I broke her heart with my faithlessness--that she died and the other is--is her sister."

He heard the clamor and the talk behind him. The mob, cool now, were laying their plans only on revenge,--revenge with the torch and the bullet.

Jud Carpenter was the leader, and Travis could hear him giving his orders. How he now loathed the man--for somehow, as he thought, Jud Carpenter stood for all the seared, blighted, dead life behind him--all the old disbelief, all the old infamy, all the old doubt and shame. But now, dying, he saw things differently. Yonder above him shone the stars and in his heart the glory of that touch of G.o.d--the thing that made him wish rather to die than have it leave him again to live in his old way.

He heard the mob talking. He heard their plans. He knew that Jud Carpenter, hating the old preacher as he did, would rather kill him than any wolf of the forest. He knew that neither Tom Travis nor the old preacher could ever hope to come out alive.

The torches were ready--the men were aligned in front with deadly shotguns.

"When the fire gets hot," he heard Jud Carpenter say, "they'll hafter come out--then shoot--shoot an' shoot to kill. See our own dead!"

They answered him with groans, with curses, with shouts of "_Lead us on, Jud Carpenter!_"

"When the jail is fired from the rear," shouted Carpenter, "stay where you are and shoot; they've no chance at all. It's fire or bullet."

Richard Travis heard it and his heart leaped--but only for one tempting moment, when a vision of loveliness in widow's weeds swept through that soul of his inner sight, which sees into the future.

Then the new light came back uplifting him with a wave of joyous strength that was sweetly calm in its destiny--glad that he had lived, glad that this test had come, glad for the death that was coming.

It was all well with him.

He forgot himself, he forgot his deadly wound, the bitterness of his life, the dog's bite--all--in the glory of this feeling, the new feeling which now would go with him into eternity.

For, as he lay there, he had seen the bell's turret above the jail and his mind was quick to act.

He smiled faintly--a happy smile--the smile of the old Roman ere he leaped into the chasm before the walls of Rome--leaped and saved his countrymen. He loved to do difficult things--to conquer and overcome where others would quit. This always had been his glory--he understood that. But this new thing--this wanting to save men who were doomed behind their barricade--this wanting to give what was left of his life for them--his enemies--this was the thing he could not understand. He only knew it was the call of something within him, stronger than himself and kin to the stars, which, clear and sweet above his head, seemed to be all that stood between him and that clear Sweet Thing out, far out, in the pale blue Silence of Things.

He reached out and found his rifle. In his coat pocket were cartridges. His arms were still strong--he sprang the magazine and filled it.

Then slowly, painfully, he began to crawl off toward the jail, pulling his rifle along. No one saw him but, G.o.d! how it hurt!...

that star falling ... scattering splinters of light everywhere ... so he lay on his face and slept awhile....

When he awoke he flushed with the shame of it: "Fainted--me--like a girl!" And he spat out the blood that boiled out of his lips.