# McClure's Magazine/Volume 20/Number 3/Across the State

from McClure's magazine, Jan 1903, pp. 268–278.
ACROSS THE STATE
BY GEORGE KIBBE TURNER
Author of "The Taskmasters"
Illustrated by Anna M. Betts
RUNNING your eye across the map of the State you see two slowly converging lines of railroad writhing out between the hills to the sea-coast. Three other lines come down from north to south by the river valleys and the jagged shore. Along these, huddled in the corners of the hills and the sea-line, lie the cities and the larger towns. A great majority of mankind, swarming in these little spots, or scuttling to and fro along the valleys on those slender lines, fondly dream they are acquainted with the land in which they live. But beyond and around all this rises the wide, bare face of the country, which they will never know—the great patches of second-growth woods, the mountain pastures sown thick with stones, the barren acres of the hillside farmer—a desolate land, latticed with gray New England roads, dotted with commonplace or neglected houses, and pitted with the staring cellars of the abandoned homes of disheartened and defeated men.
Out here in this semi-obscurity, where the regulating forces of society grow tardy and weak, strange and dangerous beings move to and fro, avoiding the apprehension of the law. Occasionally we hear of them—of some shrewd and desperate city fugitives brought to bay in a corner of the woods, or some brutal farmhouse murderer still lurking uncaptured among the hills. Often they pass through the country and out beyond, where they are never seen again.
In the extreme southwestern corner of the State the railroads do not come; the vacant spaces grow between the country roads, and the cities dwindle down to half-deserted crossroads hamlets. Here the surface of the map is covered up with the tortuous wrinkles of the hills. It is a beautiful but useless place. As far as you can see, low, unformed lumps of mountains lie jumbled aimlessly together between the ragged sky lines, or little silent cups of valleys stare up between them at their solitary patch of sky. It seems a sort of waste yard of creation, flung full of the remnants of the making of the earth.
A cool night in late September was beginning to set in along a road at the eastern edge of these hills. The shrill whistle of a small boy, a lonely and penetrating sound, went out across the great, dim, uncertain upland plain about him, which the blue twilight had already enshrouded. To the west, above the blue-black mountains, broken masses of slate-colored clouds loomed in huge relief against the whitish light of a nearly faded sunset. The thin whistle seemed the sole indication of life in all this vast and vacant place; only, some distance up the road appeared indistinctly the black outlines of a seemingly unoccupied farmhouse.
The boy was advancing up the road, carrying a half-filled pail of milk. He was a child of perhaps ten years, exceedingly frail and thin, with a drawn, waxen face, and sick, colorless lips and ears. On his head he wore a thick plush cap, and coarse, heavy shoes upon his feet. A faded coat, too long in the arms, drooped from his shoulders, and long, loose overalls of gray jeans broke and wrinkled about his slender ankles.
Suddenly the whistle stopped; the boy had seen an apparition. The figure of a man rose silently from behind a stone wall and waved to him to stop. The child stood transfixed; his face blanched with terror as the figure clambered over the wall and shambled down into the road.
The stranger was of middle height, loosely knit and thin, with a cunning, brutal face. He had a bullet-shaped head, with fine, soft, reddish-brown hair; a round, stubbly beard shot with gray; and small beady eyes set close together. He was clothed in an old, black, grotesquely-fitting cutaway coat, with coarse trousers tucked into his boot-tops. A worn visored cloth cap was on his head. In his right hand he carried an old muzzle-loading shotgun.
"Hullo," said the apparition hoarsely.
"Hello," piped the frightened child.
"What you got there?"
"Milk."
"Set it down."
The boy did as he was told, and the man, stepping forward, snatched the pail from the ground and put it quickly to his lips. He drank eagerly, like a desperately thirsty beast, with unpleasant noises in his throat and mouth.
Then he set down the pail, panting; the boy had started to run away.
Illustration: "The boy was advancing up the road, carrying a half-filled pail of milk"
The man called to him, pointing with his gun, "Come back here."
The boy obeyed, whimpering. "You ain't got no right to take my milk," he said.
"Come here," repeated the man.
"Dewey'll kill me when I go back without it," complained the boy.
"Shut up," said the man, striking him with the barrel of his gun. The boy shrank silently, like one used to blows.
"Now you set there," said the stranger, pointing to the bank with his gun, "and you stay there till I tell you to get up."
He resumed his drinking, the boy staring fearfully at him from the bank. Finally, appearing to be satisfied, he turned his attention to the child.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm the State boy up to Henry Dewey's."
"What's your name?"
"Sam."
"Been sick?" said the stranger, taking hold of his pipestem arm.
"Oh, I dunno," said the boy wearily; "I feel kinder mean. Dewey he ain't treated me very good."
The man grunted unsympathetically. "Had your supper?" he asked.
"No."
"Well, drink this," he said, indicating the milk that was left.
"No, I don't want to; Dewey'll just kill me when I get back," the boy repeated.
"You drink it," commanded the man.
The boy, taking up the clumsy pail, sipped lightly at the milk over its edge, then started to set it down.
"Drink some more," said the man; "you'll need it."
The boy this time took a long and hearty draught. "Now, can I go?" he ventured when he had finished.
The man not answering at once, he took up the pail and shuffled a few steps forward to try him.
"No, you don't," called the other. "Come back here; you're goin' with me."
"What for?"
"Never mind what for. Throw that pail over the wail. Now, come along."
He started out toward the east.
"Now, don't you try any funny business," he instructed him. "If you do, you'll wish you hadn't."
The two went along together, the boy shrinking to the farthest possible side of the road from his companion, his poor little intellect stricken with wonder and fear.
They had advanced but a short distance when the man suddenly stopped. The sound of a wagon and the disjointed monotones of men's voices floated up the still road. The man silently pointed the boy to the stone wall, and both disappeared behind it.
"If you move, I'll kill you," whispered the man in the child's ear.
The wagon came on, rattling and grating on the stony road, and the gruff voices of its occupants grew louder.
"I tell you we're goin' to get him," said one. "He's in there somewheres."
"What makes you think so?"
"Think so? I know so. Didn't Hen Loomis's wife see him here only Tuesday afternoon, and get scart most to death by him? And didn't Ben Niles's boys find where he'd been havin' a fire over in Bemis's swamp? Oh, he's there fast enough."
"Well, if he is, you can have my chance at him. I ain't anxious to get too clus to that gun of his'n."
"That $500's worth tryin' for, anyhow," said the other voice, growing more faint. "Besides, there'll—be—enough—there—to-morrer—to——"
The words were no longer distinguishable. The dark head of the man reared itself cautiously from behind the wall and listened till they were out of sight. Then he got up quickly, pulled the boy over the wall with him, and started along the road again.
"What's that's goin' to happen to-morrer?" he asked.
"It's the hunt."
"What hunt?"
"For Bostwick, the murderer; the feller that killed a man over in Dumbleton. That is," stammered the boy, looking furtively at the man, "folks say he killed him. And, anyway, they're goin' to hunt the swamps to-morrer for him. And there's $500 reward for catching him," said the boy, with his voice full of wonder at the magnificence of the sum.
"Where're they goin' to hunt?" asked the man.
"Right through here anywheres," announced the child, "and over west of here. They've been huntin' him right along through from Windham County. They come near catchin' him over there. They had bloodhounds to track him with."
"They got them bloodhounds here?" flashed the man.
"I dunno," said the boy; "they was tryin' to get 'em."
The man had unconsciously quickened his step; the boy followed with difficulty, occasionally breaking into a run. In his childish mind he was trying to frame a question properly.
"I thought—I thought first you was him—Bostwick, I mean," he quavered. "Wasn't that funny?"
He did not get the answer he was looking for.
"You did, huh?" growled the man.
"Yes, sir," said the boy faintly.
A long and futile silence ensued; the conversation had stopped. The boy still shrank to the other border of the road as he pattered along after his companion. The man pushed along with long, ungainly strides, his knees springing under him at every step. The boy followed as best he could.
"Have I got to go with you all night?" he ventured at length.
An affirmative grunt came from across the road.
"What makes you want to take me with you?" he asked after a pause.
"I ain't goin' to have you go back home—not to-night. Besides, I need you."
"Why? What good could I do?" argued the boy.
Silence.
"Won't you tell me, please."
"You shut your yap," said the man, ending the discussion.
For long hours the two silent figures went eastward along the road, through the still stretches where it tunnels through the motionless woods; down into the cold white reek of the marshes—small, ghostly amphitheaters where the frogs chanted their grotesque choruses; past the lonely, lifeless, black-windowed farmhouses; up across the bare, stony hills, with their bleak, dark edges outlined against the dim, starry sky.
They had gone along without a word for ten dark miles. Suddenly, when they were coming through a little patch of thin woods, a spot of white darted out from one side and went bobbing across the road.The man stopped, threw up his gun, and fired. The spot stopped, and a convulsive scratching began in the weeds at the roadside. The man stepped toward it and came back again, carrying a cotton-tail rabbit with a broken back. He mercilessly beat out its remaining life by rapping its head against a boulder.
"You saw how I got that feller?" he asked, peering into the boy's face.
"Yes, sir."
"Well, you take warnin' by that. Don't you never let me catch you tryin' to run away, that's all. Understan'?"
"Yes, sir," repeated the boy feebly.
"Oh, I don't miss nothin'; not very often," boasted the man.
As the night wore on, the boy, poorly nourished for such exertion, and craving his natural sleep, began to stumble and drop behind from fatigue. At last he fell flat. His companion, after urging him by threats and oaths, finally came across and dragged him on, pulling at his lifeless arm.
"I can't, I can't," complained the tired boy. Nevertheless they went a mile or two farther before they stopped; they had traveled in all some twenty miles. The man, seeing the dawn coming on, selected a close, low thicket of young pines a little back from the road, and crawled in, pushing the boy before him. The child lapsed into a black, unconscious sleep where he fell, and the man soon followed his example, with his gun beside him.
When the boy awoke again, the man had him by the arm, whispering to him to be silent. There were voices outside the pine thicket. Two ungainly country youths, with shotguns in their hands, clumped down the pasture, followed by a little black mongrel dog.
"Wonder if they got Bostwick over to Jackson's Corners to-day?" said one.
"I dunno."
"The feller that gets that $500'll be a lucky one, won't he?"
"Yep."
"Wisht we could see him once, by Jiminy, so we could have a shy at it."
"How'd you like to have him sittin' right over there where that rock is?" said the young fellow, stopping and taking a long and deliberate aim at his imaginary captive. "They ain't no such luck for us."
Illustration: "The two silent figures went eastward along the road"
Illustration: "The small boy dazed by his sudden good fortune followed her silently"
"Come on," said the other.
All at once the small dog, snuffing at the pine thicket, set up a currish clamor. He had smelled the two persons inside.
"What's that dog got in there?" asked the loitering one.
The barking continued. The man lay on his belly in the thicket, glowering at the two figures.
"I'm a-goin' back and see what it is," said the inquisitive one.
Underneath the noise of the dog's barking came two ugly snaps, and the hammers of the man's old muzzle-loader lay back viciously.
"Oh, come along," called the companion impatiently. "We're late, anyhow. If you wait to see everything that fool dog barks at, we'll never get there."
The other reluctantly obeyed, and the two youths, by repeated calls and stampings, dragged the unwilling small dog from his discovery.
As the man watched the trio disappear, he gave a little sigh of relief.
"I'd a-hated to done it," he said softly to himself. He uncocked his gun and laid it down. The boy only stared. He was sick and white and speechless.
Before the boy had waked, the man had dressed the rabbit. He now cooked it over a crude brush fire, and then began devouring it from his hands, giving the boy his small share.
"To-morrer," he said, "you get your share of the grub, or you go without."
The silence of the night before continued between the two. The child finally endeavored to break it.
"I—I'm glad they didn't catch us, ain't you?" he ventured.
The man gave an affirmative grunt.
"So'm I."
Silence fell again between them; the crude little boyish attempt at friendliness had failed. The boy, having permanently subsided into silence, stared furtively at the figure beside him. He sat propped up against a little tree, his eyes half closed, waiting for the dark. Across his knees lay his weapon—the old, grim, muzzle-loading shotgun, which never left his hands. The boy's eyes were fixed mostly on this—on the worn and shining butt-plate, the scarred and dingy black walnut stock, the dents on the long brown barrels worn bright at their ends. He was thinking, sick at heart, of what it had already done, and what it threatened him. His whole childish soul cowered before it, beyond any possibility of revolt.
"Come along," said the man, poking him with the weapon. It was dark enough at last. "We'll git out of this country," he continued, with an oath.
The boy rose and followed him, flinching with the exquisite pain of the first use of his tired and blistered feet.
The weather had softened; it looked like an approaching rain. The sunset had been pale and watery, and now the stars shone through a soft blur of gray, and the air of the night seemed thick with moist darkness. They soon came to a new country, less broken and precipitous; they were leaving the hills behind them. Toward midnight they reached the great river which divides the State.
Turning from the highway, they crossed it on the high, gaunt, skeleton framework of a railroad bridge. Behind them, set over the hills they had left, a great, soft, mysterious planet painted its dim yellow trail in the dark, still waters of the stream. The weary boy, glancing over his shoulder, saw it with a feeling of awe and loneliness.
Just as the two dusky figures had achieved the eastern bank, the express came roaring and whistling down from the north like some unearthly animal shrieking at its sudden discovery of the river. The two fugitives stood by, outside the yellow blur from the windows and waited till its whirling and dizzy clatter had ceased; then stared helplessly at the red-eyed lanterns glowering in its du.sty wake. It was their first unexpected encounter with the great forces of civilization.
Nothing more unusual chanced that night. The two returned to the highway, and shortly after the man deftly and silently stole two chickens from a farmyard, while the boy stood watching in the road. They slept again in a little thicket, eating one chicken before they went to rest, and saving the other for the coming day.
That next afternoon it appeared what part the boy must take. He was to act as a scout and forager—to get all sorts of information, occasionally to buy bread—in short, to stand between the man and the rest of the world. If asked about his companion, he must explain that he was his father. Thus the very presence of the boy served the man as a guard against suspicion.
"But you want to remember I got my eye on you all the time. And you don't want to talk too much," the man cautioned him.
Night fell early, and they pushed on. A thin rain had begun, and the sky was overcast with solid blue-black clouds. All at once, when it was quite dark, they came out on the brow of a little hill. Beneath them, across a little murky plain, the clear white electric lights of a distant city shone, scattered on the darkness—black velvet and diamonds—against the dim horizon line.
The man pointed toward them and outlined his orders. They were to go nearer them together, and then the boy was to go on alone and buy a bottle of cheap gin.
"If you stay too long," said the man, dismissing him, "I'll come and git you; and if I do, I'll be sorry for you, that's all."
The boy did not doubt for an instant the man's ability to carry out his threat; the whole heaven and earth were filled for him with the terror of the power of this silent man with the gun. He trudged into the city alone; by a display of infinite juvenile tact and mendacity got a stranger to buy the liquor for him, and returned in fear and haste to the meeting place. The man, sitting by the road-side, immediately took a great draught of the crude and fiery liquor.
It rained miserably as they went along, but the man paid no attention. Exhilarated by the liquor, for the time being he had changed his whole manner. From his customary morose taciturnity he became gradually boisterous. He pushed the weak boy back and forth across the road; he slapped him heavily on the back, and tripped him up with the barrel of his gun; he sent out uncouth and foolish cries, and maliciously menaced the terrified child with his weapon. Then he broke into a series of yells, and at last discharged his shotgun into the air. Fortunately for him, there was no one to take the trouble to see what drunken man this was who was disturbing the sleep of the countryside.
Finally, when his exhilaration was somewhat spent, he became foolishly confidential.
"What made you guess I was Bostwick, that time?" he demanded of the boy, with a cunning leer.
"I dunno," stammered the boy.
"You dunno, don't you? Well, I'm goin' to tell you somethin'. I am Shem Bostwick. I'm the feller they're lookin' for. I'm just that same boy. Now you know it, don't yer? But don' you tell anybody, will yer?
"By God!" he continued, straightening himself up, "lizzen to me askin' him not to tell anybody. If he did tell, I'd jus' blow him to chunks.
"Look a' that," he continued, fondling his old shotgun, "ain' she a dandy? Bes' frien' I've got. I've had that ol' girl twenty years, an' they ain' no better shooter in this State. Oh, she fools 'em all. I can git a white rabbit with her every time at twenty rod.
"And that ain' all I can git with her neither," he said leering; "you know that, young feller, jus' well's I do. Don't you, huh? They ain' nothin' like her round these parts, and don' you forgit it. I bet Lem Bradford thought so when I let him have it. I didn' have to let him have it but once, neither; once was enough.
"Wha's all this hollerin' about my killin' Lem Bradford, huh?" began the murderer again, like a man arguing a grievance. "What're they chasin' me round so for? The critter brought it on himself, didn't he? Sposin' I did lick my wife once or twice, the contrary devil—she was my woman, wa'n't she, and not his'n? It don' make no difference if she was his sister. I told him what he'd get if he kep' on his interferin', and he got it. And that's all there is to it. If you had a wife, and anybody come interferin' between you and her, you'd done the same, wouldn't yer? Wouldn't yer, huh?"
"Oh, yes, sir," said the boy feebly.
The two tramped through the night, the murderer continuing his maudlin tirade to the child, and occasionally stopping to take another drink. Toward morning they turned from the road and rested in an old barn in the woods—a tottering, wood-colored ruin in a small clearing in the woods, filled with the coarse hay from the little damp woodland meadow.
When the boy awoke again the man was outside the barn, seated with his back against the wall, staring at a soiled copy of a sensational newspaper. Sprawling across the front page, set in the midst of the type, was a coarse black cut of the uncouth, gorilla-like figure of a man, carrying a gun in one great hand. Across the top, in staring letters was printed, "Shem Bostwick." As the boy came out of the barn, the murderer was muttering through the letters of his own name.
"D' you hear them fellers outside here this mornin'?" he called.
"No, sir."
"Well there was some—three of 'em out here huntin'—and when they went away they left this paper.
"Here," he demanded, "how does that go? You read that there."
"I'd rather not," objected the boy, looking at it; "I'm 'fraid you won't like it."
"You go ahead and read it."
The boy began to read in halting, childish fashion, while the man listened in grim silence.
"'Shem Bost-wick, mon-ster and mur-der-er, defies ci-vi-li-za-tion with his gun. A stor-y of mur-der foul and vain pursuit. Can this be a hu-man be-ing?' That's what it says in big letters; now it says like this:
"'Dumbleton, September 25.—A hor-ri-ble and re-vol-ting mon-ster, a hu-man beast arm-ed with a shot-gun, is roam-ing about the swamps around this quiet ham-let, hold-ing ci-vi-li-za-tion at bay with his wea-pon. In vain packs of savage blood-hounds and de-ter-min-ed bands of stur-dy far-mers scour the coun-try-side for him day by day. These things have no ter-ror for him. A dweller of the for-ests from boy-hood, he laughs at all at-tempts at capture. The old-est in-hab-i-tants shake their heads and say he will never be tak-en alive. If he is, it will mean still more tra-ge-dies.
"'On Sep-tem-ber thir-teen, a blood-y and event-ful day in this lit-tle com-mu-nity, Shem Bostwick shot and killed Lem Bradford in his own doorway. It was mur-der most foul. Bradford was a peace-a-ble and law-a-bid-ing citi-zen. Bostwick, as all a-gree, is a brute of the low-est type—cow-ard-ly, in-tem-per-ate, quar-rel-some—an in-hu-man hus-band and fath-er, fear-ed and de-spised by all——"
"Here," said the man at last, "does it say all that?"
"Yes, sir," said the boy, pointing, "right there."
The man muttered over it with his lips.
"Damn yuh," he said, "if I thought you was makin' that up I'd kill yer."
"That's just what it says," protested the boy. "Right there, see?"
"Yes, I guess it does," said the man, who could only decipher it in a crude way.
He crumpled up the paper viciously and threw it down. "I'd like to see the feller that wrote that, once," he said.
"Well, they ain't got me yit," he continued, after a pause.
The man was silent and ugly after his night of drinking. He said nothing more till they were on their way again.
"I talked pretty free last night, didn't I?" he broke out, at length.
"Yes, sir; that is quite a lot—you did."
"What'd I tell yer?"
"Oh, about yourself and Lem Bradford and everything like that."
The murderer stopped the boy in the middle of the road, seizing his arm fiercely, and drawing him in front of him.
"If you ever said a word to anybody about what I told you, you know what I'd do to you? I'd blow you to pieces. Understan'?"
"Yes, sir," said the boy. "I won't never, never tell one word—not to anybody."
"You remember now, you're the only one who knows about me. If anybody finds out who I am, I'll know who told 'em, and the first thing I do, I git you."
"Don't," said the boy, flinching. "You're hurtin' my arm."
"You understan'?" said the other, shaking him.
"Oh, yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; I do. Oh, please let go."
The man loosed him, and they walked on together, the boy nursing his arm and revolving his fears silently in his mind. He was too terrified even to cry.
They had come now to a section where there were more towns and cities to be avoided, and a more frequent sprinkling of farmhouses. They kept well to the south of the railroad, along the higher and more barren land, two black figures on the ridges, outlined against the night sky—hunted creatures looking down on civilization from afar. Occasionally they heard the faint shrieks of the locomotives across the hills, occasionally they saw the blur of a city's light on the black horizon line. All this time they were drawing away from danger. Their journeys grew shorter every night; at last they began to travel days. But as the physical strain decreased, the terror of the silent child reached its crisis. His fears now took a very concrete form. He had been of great assistance to the man; now more and more he was ceasing to be a help and becoming a positive danger. How would the man dispose of him? Ever since that night of drunken confession, a spirit of insane suspicion had grown upon the murderer. He struck the boy and watched him and threatened him.
"What's to hinder me just knockin' you in the head some night, and buryin' you, huh?" he asked, one day. "Nobody'd be no wiser, would they?"
This grim threat, taken with a child's seriousness, gathered strength in the boy's mind, till it excluded all other thinking. By day he looked furtively into the man's face, striving to see what was going on in that dull mind; by night he woke with a start and a gasp, dreaming of it.
They came at last to the low country, which betokened the neighborhood of the sea—a light, rather barren land, with patches of scrubby trees, and broken here and there with little rounded hills. The more the man considered himself safe, the more his natural brutal daring returned to him. He was really in greater danger than ever. Filled with his distrust of the boy, he no longer stayed out of sight while the child was making his calls at the houses along the way. Instead, he loitered near, in the road, a strange and suspicious figure, listening to overhear the conversation. Once or twice he had broken in and ordered him away, to the mild wonder of the women at the door.
In the midst of one quiet, idle country afternoon they came to a broad, white farmhouse set a little back from the road. The boy was sent up to it. In the wide kitchen a large, motherly woman, past middle age, with a kind, strong face, and grayish hair drawn back from her ample forehead, sat rocking back and forth in a little rocking-chair, resting from her work. A tall, raw-boned girl was busy about the room. The older woman was touched by the forlorn appearance of the child, and began to ply him with questions. The boy returned his usual story. The woman pressed him further; she was too shrewd for the child, and soon had him confused.
"You're a-lyin' to me, boy," she said, taking him by the shoulders. "Now you tell me, who are you, truly?"
At this moment the man, frightened and exasperated by the delay, and finding his calls of no avail, appeared in the doorway. The girl gave a little exclamation of fear when she saw him.
"What're tryin' to do with that boy, huh?" he said to the elderly woman.
"I'm tryin' to find out who he is," she answered, her broad, firm mouth tightening.
"Well, he's my boy, so you let him be."
"I don't know as I'm called on to let him be. I don't believe he's your boy, in the first place."
The man strode across the room and gripped the boy by the wrist. "You come on out of here," he said, jerking him away. "And you," he said to the woman, "take your hands off'n him and keep 'em off."
She started toward him, and he threatened her with his gun. The undaunted woman, astonished by his effrontery, but not in the least terrified, began a search for some domestic weapon. "I'll teach you to come threatenin' people in their own houses," she cried, seizing a broom. "Here, you get out of this. Oh, I ain't afraid of your gun!"
"You ain't, huh?" said the man, cocking it.
He retreated with the boy, covering her with the weapon. The woman stood her ground, but she did not dare to advance. As the pair went around the corner of the house and started down the road, she collapsed into her chair.
"Well, my goodness gracious, if I don't believe he'd a really shot me," she called breathlessly to the motionless girl, fanning herself with her apron. In a moment more she was upon her feet again.
"Well, here, Martha," she said, "this won't do. You stay here while I go out and call the men. What's the use of havin' a deputy sheriff for your husband, if he can't protect your own home?"
She hurried out behind the house, and blew a long blast on the conch shell for the men in the fields. The fugitive in the road heard the sound and took warning. True to his instincts he left the highway and headed for the nearest woods.
"What'd you tell her, huh?" he asked, seizing the boy's arm again.
"Oh, don't, please don't," said the boy. "I didn't tell her nothin'."
"I got a good mind to kill yer," said the man.
"Oh, honest, I didn't tell her. I done everything I could; I lied every way I could think of."
Even from where they had gone, they could see the men gathering. A boy started off on a bicycle to a neighbor's. The women stood watching them, while the men rushed into the house.
These women, it seemed, had even a suspicion of who he was.
"I tell you what he looked like to me, ma'am," said the hired girl, "he looked just like that picture of a murderer they had in last Sunday's paper from out in Windham County."
"I believe you, he does. But what's he doin' with a boy? Look at him now kickin' that child," she continued. "I wisht I had him where I could lay my hands on him."
"Where've they gone to, mother?" said the head of the house, rushing out again, with his heavy shotgun in his hand.
"Down to the swamp; they've just this minute gone into the woods right there by the big hemlock tree."
The two fugitives had come into the duck-hunting country, where every farmhouse had its shotgun, and many of them two—great serious ten-bores most of them, for use on the coast. It was a bad section to arouse. The party from the house was ready to start immediately. The excited boy on the bicycle had done his work thoroughly, and figures of farmers were already seen hurrying down the road, with guns in their hands, and some of them with their dogs. All converged rapidly toward the big hemlock at the edge of the woods.
"You want to watch out for him," said the deputy sheriff; "he's a desperate man, and he's got a gun, and there's no knowin' what he'd do with it. He can't go very far now before he gets into the swamp."
Suddenly there was the report of a gun. The dogs had found the man, and he had shot the foremost of them, a great ugly mongrel mastiff.
The other animals retreated, yelping, and the party of men moved down the outside of the woods to where the shot came from. The murderer appeared dimly among the trees, reloading his weapon, the great, bloody dog thrashing about half dead a little way before him. He was not far from the edge of the woods; just behind him was a branch of the swamp.
The owner of the dog was frantic with rage. "You wait," he cried, with an oath, edging in toward the man. "Two can play at that game."
"You want to be careful, now, Jim," said another.
"Oh, I guess a ten-bore'll carry farther'n that old twelve of his."
"Yes, by God!" said another excited man, "and a rifle'll carry farther'n a ten."
"That's all right," said the deputy, "but what about that boy? You ain't thinkin' of him. Just look what he's doin' with him."
The man was now preparing to make a last use of the boy. He had deliberately placed him before him as a protection.
"No, sir," said the deputy, "don't you shoot and hit that boy. You fellers are in too much of a hurry. I'm goin' in and tell him to give himself up."
He advanced a few steps into the woods.
"You might as well put down that gun and give yourself up," he called. "You can't get away now, anyhow."
In reply the man leveled his gun at him. "You get out o' here," he said.
The deputy sheriff looked at him without flinching, wondering whether he were called upon to advance.
"I wouldn't do it, Mr. Crane," cautioned two or three voices; "you can't tell what he might do. Besides, we'll get him somehow."
The deputy finally took their advice.
It seemed for a long time that they had been too hopeful. For nearly two hours he stood there at bay. The struggles of the dying dog ceased; the sun sank down toward the horizon, and its level shafts flushed pink the dark interior of the woods; the cool sense of evening began to settle in upon the lowlands. Still the hunted man stood there, grim, speechless, desperate, peering out between the trees. Before him sat the huddled figure of the boy; behind him the practically impassable branch of the swamp. The semi-circle of men stood irresolutely at the edge of the woods.
At last there was a little shout of recognition from the younger fellows in the gathering. "Here's Birnie White."
The town dare-devil, a young, athletic fellow, with a handsome, rather dissipated face, had arrived. He felt at once that something was expected of him, and listened in silence to the features of the situation. At last calling aside his boon companion, he talked earnestly to him, then started off alone around the edge of the woods.
"If he thinks he can keep me out o' there, he's damned mistaken," he said.
"You stay where you are," he called to some of the crowd, who had started after him.
"What's he up to now?" asked some one.
"You wait," said his friend.
The figure skirted around and disappeared into the woods beyond the little branch of the swamp. They could hear him crashing through the underbrush.
All at once he stopped, and his hoarse voice echoed harshly through the woods. He was taunting and reviling Bostwick, calling across to the group of men a continual stream of insults.
"I got him headed off this way," he yelled. "He's a healthy murderer, he is. You couldn't make him fight with a club. Oh, I've got him. I see where that five hundred dollar reward comes to me. Get ap out o' there, you sneakin' devil, you. You won't, hey? Well, I'll just come in and get you then. Oh, you're a nice thing, you are; you're easy. Say, he could 'a' come right out o' here, if he'd only had the sense to. Now we've got him corralled."
His continual jibes made the murderer nervous and angry. He became suspicious of being trapped from the rear. Soon he got up, stepped down to the edge of the swamp, and began peering through the bushes which concealed his tormentor. The yells of the latter continued, and Bostwick, growing more and more angry, devoted still more of his attention to getting him.
"Come on now, Whiskers," taunted the dare-devil, "come on out and see a feller. There'd be just two of us—you and me. Come on out and take a whirl with me. You don't dare to, that's what's the matter with you.
"Oh, I see you prowlin' round, you pup, you. You stick your ugly mug out o' there again, and I'll let you have it."
The fugitive's whole hatred and attention became focussed at the point where the yells came from. Suddenly there came a cry from behind him.
"We've got the boy. We've got the boy!"
The confederate, watching his chance, had sneaked up and seized the child at an opportune moment, and hurried him away. From outside the woods came a joyful clamor of men and dogs.
There were now left just these two men, with guns in their hands, stalking each other on either side of the thicket of the swamp. They were nearly matched in woodcraft; the murderer began to understand this. Besides, being surrounded now on both sides, it was necessary for him to do something at once.
"Now where are you, Willie?" taunted his persecutor across the swamp.
The desperate man came plunging through the bushes in the direction of the voice, exactly as the other intended that he should. As he emerged a little from the thickest of it, he saw the form of his enemy disappearing at the other side of a little opening in the center of the swamp. He took a snap shot at him. He was too late; he missed him.
Excited cries came from the crowd outside the woods.
"Hi, yi, yi, yi!" yelled the dare-devil; "missed me, missed me."
With a yell of beastly anger the murderer pushed out to follow him, the ground of the swamp growing more and more uncertain under his feet. At last, lunging forward at a little clump of grass, he missed his calculations and splashed down on all fours into the soft treachery of the deepest part of the marsh. His terrible gun, falling with him, was choked solid with mud—become in an instant a ridiculous and bedraggled thing.
The dare-devil, watching for some such downfall, reappeared immediately at the edge of the opening, and covered him with his gun.
"I've got him," he yelled joyously; "I've got him."
The eager crowd came rushing through the woods. The man, wallowing to his feet, stood sullenly waiting where he was, like a dangerous animal in a trap, sinking all the time farther and farther into the soft ground.
A part of the crowd occupied themselves dragging him to firm land and securing him. Another group gathered about the boy, questioning him.
The motherly woman and the girl, drawn by curiosity to the edge of the woods, had charge of him.
"Who is he?" demanded some one abruptly, concerning the captured man.
The boy did not answer.
"You'd better tell me," said the man roughly, "if you know what's good for you."
The motherly woman turned on him energetically.
"You leave that boy alone," she said; "I'll take care of him.
"Won't you tell me, boy, who the man is?" she asked persuasively.
"I'd rather not."
"Tell me one thing. Is he Bostwick, the murderer?"
The boy hung his head.
"Is he? Tell me, that's a good boy. There won't anybody hurt you now."
The boy at last gave a deep affirmative nod, without speaking.
The crowd about them broke into a shout.
"It's him; it's him. It's Bostwick," they called.
The boy's terror returned. "I hadn't ought to told you," he cried. "He'll kill me, he will. He'll just kill me."
"There, there," said the motherly woman, kneeling and putting her arms around him. "He can't hurt you now. They've arrested him."
The boy hid his face in her shoulder.
"Poor little feller," she said; "just feel o' them arms and that body. There just ain't nothin' to him."
"I guess he's glad to get away from that man," ventured the girl.
"I guess you are, too, ain't you?" said the motherly woman, holding him away from her.
"Oh, I dunno," said the boy, shuffling with his feet. "He scared me, that's all. He didn't treat me much worse'n Dewey did. It don't make much difference to me, anyhow. I'm nothin' but a State boy. They'll just send me back to Dewey, that's all."
"They won't, not if I can help it," said the motherly woman determinedly. "And they can't neither—not when he treated you like that.
"I've half a mind to keep you myself." she said.
A flush of pleasure showed under the boy's pale skin.
"I wisht you could," he stammered.
"I can and I will," said the woman, touched by his pathetic eagerness. "We've been wantin' a boy round the house some time.
"Come on now," she said, taking him by the hand, "we'll go and see if we can't get you something to eat and something fit to wear."
The small boy, dazed by his sudden good fortune, followed her silently up across the field, and both disappeared into the doorway of the kitchen. He was set down by the woman at the table while she was getting some food. As he sat there, staring about the strange room, he heard the loud talk of the men hitching up at the barn to drive Bostwick away to jail. He began to tremble again at the sound. The motherly woman, seeing this, came across the room and put a kind hand on his shoulder.
The new-found sympathy, the release from terror and bondage, the unexpected sense of hope for the future swept all at once over the mind of the child and overpowered him. He threw his face down on his hands and began sobbing with hysterical happiness against the edge of the old kitchen table.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1952, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 71 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse