Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1910-01-13
The Story
of a Crime
BY r RANrES KEATON
Cog sssF s1H1les Co. Ltd)


and brimming with new life: the
mounds and children romped about the
door, the cattle were alert about their
business of feeding even the guinea
FOWL huttered and shrieked more
madly than was their wont.
The day before there had been rain.
but this morning the sun rose in a
brilliant sky. Little tricksy gusts
blew the cloudlets hitler and yon. as
II In the heavens, too, there was ex-
uberant life.
Jerry was tall and slim and fair, a
mountaineer of unmixed English
blood. His blue eyes had the slow
pondering look Of a man unstirred by
fancy and mistaken by fear. He ex-
pected to win, others stepped from his
path; he never had made an enemy
or lost friend. OF the spiritual life
ne had not thought as yet, and things
supernatural aroused in him a COM
portable feeling OF contempt; ghosts,
spooks, wizards, witch rulings, haunts,
all provoked his laughter.
Riding with lelsurely haste he
passed the cotton-pickers in the fields
and the wagons heaped with snowy
burdens going to be ginned-and so
came, by eleven o'clock, into Collard
valley. Smiling as he passed a clump
of elders, "Ah tell you," he said to
himself, hit was that ole elder bush
taught me to pick cotton!" and, think
ing about his boyhodd, he came. to the
farm of his fathers friend, Foster
Black. To Jerry everything looked
well. he knew the cotton and the
wheat had been good, both on them
money crops; old man Foster'n be
gitten paint on his house next you
know" AS he thought of the house
a dull red arose in HIS face.
Ma home might be builded come
next springtime." He pictured his
sweetheart standing In the doorway.
10 help an imagination slow to visual
lie he raised his happy eyes to the
door of Foster Blacks house, that
stood a scant thirty feet back from
the road, and refined in his horse.
Gazing at the house, his thoughts
stopped and his brave heart shook in
his breast. What allied him?" he
questioned, and gripped the pommel
OF his saddle and forced his eyes,
swimming and bewildered, to see the
house, the porch, the chimney, even
as they faded and were gone. He sat
his horse, and yet he seemed to be
no longer in the road. For a moment
he struggled with the confusion of
his vision, and then, although he knew
that he was in the road, with his
horse rearing beneath him, with a
creeping horror he felt himself to be
inside the house. Every pot and ket-
tie, the chairs and table, stood plain
to sight; on the cold hearth q spot
of gray light fell from the open chin
ney, the wooden shutters were closed
and through the knot-holes came a
little brightness. A cold terror shook
his frame, the blood drumming in his
ears sickened him. He heard the
birds twittering, as in the gray before
the dawning. Then he heard some
thing try the shutter: then bare feet
running around the house-pad, pad,
pad,-intolerablyl Then there fell
heart-wringing silence-then the bare
feet padding again; a gutteral, word
less cry, and with rending noise, the
stout door splintered and fell. In the
pale, clear light, dropping a fence rail
from his hands, stood a man. froth
hecking his red beard, the lust of
blood glinting in his eyes. He cried
out, as 1t were, gladly, and running
forward set his hands to Jerry's
throat.
On reaching the town and turning
the customary corners, perhaps
calIaed by old habit. the horse stop
ped at the usual livery stable and
stood trembling-Jerry trembling in
the saddle.
The men sitting lazily about awhile,
unrealizing, and then came forward.
Why, Jerry, whar you all bin?"
No, sab; he ain drunk"
My lordy, he air plumb skeered
siIly!"
At that plain statement tongues ran
riot, all declaring that mo one never
had seen Jerry skeered nowhar," and
questions rained on him like hail.
In the midst of the gathering crowd,
Jerry. the horse and the dog covered
and quaked-the man as speechless
as his beasts.
Presently someone pulled the will
less body from the saddle and forced
whisky between the lips that twitched
and fieered
One slapped him on the back, and
another, an old man, looked into his
eyes and called him by his name.
Hes out'n his mind; Use call him
back to hit" he explained.
Jerry answered the call-recogni-
ton awoke in his eyes.
"Ah CANT say hit" he whispered,
and, after a time, when he had won
back some voice, Foster Blacks
choked to death. All seen the man as
done tin a day vision-jes' now
his beard was red and he'd frothed
at the mouth. He come to the house
prowlin' and eryin' like the wild beas-