After He was Dead

by Melville Davisson Post

AFTER HE WAS DEAD

BY MELVILLE DAVISSON POST

An hour before sunset the man, who had been at work all day, turned out of the cornfield. He crossed the furrows to the rail fence, with the hoe in his hands. At the bars leading into the field a squirrel rifle, with a long wooden stock reaching to the end of the barrel, stood against the chestnut post; beside it lay a powder-horn attached to a pouch of deerskin containing bullets. The man set his hoe against the fence. He wiped his hands on the coarse fox-grass growing in the furrows, examined the sun for a moment, then took up the rifle, removed an exploded cap from the nipple, and began to load it.

He poured the black powder into his palm, and bending his palm emptied it into the barrel. The measure of powder was a sufficient charge, but be added to it half the quantity again, emptied into his palm from the horn. Then he took a handful of bullets out of the pouch, selected one of which the neck was squarely cut, and placing a tiny fragment of calico over the muzzle of the rifle, drew out the hickory ramrod and forced the bullet down. He got a percussion cap out of a paper box, examined it, placed it on the nipple, and gently pressed it down with the hammer of the lock.

When the gun was thus carefully loaded the man threw it across his shoulder and, taking the horn and pouch in his hand, left the field. He went along a path leading through a wood to the valley below. Midway of the wood he stopped and concealed the horn and pouch in a hollow tree. Then he continued on his way with the rifle tucked under his arm.

The country below him was one of little farms, skirted by trees lining the crests of low hills. The man traveled for several miles, keeping in the shelter of the wood. Finally, he crossed a river on a fallen tree and sat down in a thicket behind a rail fence. Beyond this fence was a pasture field and a score of grazing cattle. In this field, some twenty paces from where the man sat, the earth was bare in little patches where the owner of the cattle had been accustomed to give them salt.

The sun was still visible, but great shadows were beginning to lengthen across the valley. Presently an old man, riding a gray horse, entered the field from the road. When he came through the gate, tho man concealed in the brush cocked his rifle, laid the muzzle on a rail of the fence, and waited, with his jaw pressed against the stock. The old man rode leisurely across the field to the place where he had been accustomed to 'salt' his cattle. There he got down, opened a bag which, he carried across the pommel of his saddle, and began to drop handfuls of salt on the bare patches in the pasture. From time to time he called the cattle, and when he did so he stood up with his back toward the fence, looking at the bullocks approaching slowly from another quarter of the field.

There was a sharp report. The old man turned stiffly on his heels with his arms spread out. His face was distorted with amazement, then it changed to terror. He called out something, in a thick, choked voice; then he fell with his arms doubled under him.

A thin wisp of smoke floated up from the rail fence; the horse, however, did not move; it remained standing with its bridle-rein lying on the earth. The cattle continued to approach. The man in the brush arose. The dead man had called out his name 'Henry Fuget.' Of that he was certain. That he had distinctly heard. But of the other words he was not so certain. He thought the old man had said, 'You shall hear from me!' But the words were choked in the throat. He might have heard incorrectly. He looked carefully about him to be sure that no one had heard his name thus called out; then he took up his rifle, crossed the river on the fallen tree, and returned toward the cornfield.

He was a stout, compactly-built man of middle life. His hair was dark, but his eyes were blue. He was evidently of Celtic origin. He walked slowly, like one who neither delays nor hurries. He got the horn and pouch from the hollow tree as he passed, reloaded his rifle, shot one or two gray squirrels out of the maple trees, took them in his hand, and went down the ridge through the little valley, to a farmhouse. He had traveled seven miles, and it was now night.

After the evening meal, which the laborer ate with the family of his employer, he went to his bed in the loft of the farmhouse. On this night Fuget ate well and slept profoundly. The stress which had attended his plan to kill Samuel Pickens, seemed now to disappear. The following morning he returned to his work in the cornfield. But as the day advanced he became curious to know if the body of Pickens had been found, and how the country had received the discovery. He had no seizure of anxiety. He had carefully concealed every act in this tragic drama. He was unknown in this part of the country. Pickens had not seen him before the shot. He had come here quietly, obtained employment as a farm laborer, under the name of Williams, located his man, watched, and killed him. True, Pickens had realized who it was who had fired the shot when the bullet entered his body, but he was dead the following moment, and before that he had believed Fuget in another part of the world.

As Fuget remembered the scene, he found himself trying to determine what, exactly, it was that Pickens had said, after he had called his name. It seemed to Fuget that he must have heard incorrectly. He labored to recall the exact sounds that had reached him. If not these words,—'You shall hear from me,'—what was it that Pickens had said? And as he puzzled, he became more curious to know how Pickens had been found, and what the people were saying of the murder. Such news travels swiftly.

As the day advanced, Fuget's curiosity increased. He paused from time to time in the furrow, and remained leaning on his hoe-handle. Finally he thrust the blade of the hoe under a root, broke it at the eye, and returned to the farmhouse, with the broken hoe in his hand.

At the door he met the farmer's wife. She spread out her arms with a sudden, abrupt gesture.

'La! Mr. Williams,' she said, 'have you heard the news? Somebody shot ole Sam Pickens.'

Fuget stopped. 'Who's Sam Pickens?' he said.

'Bless my life!' said the woman; 'I forgot you 're a stranger. Sam Pickens? Why, he's a cattle-man that come over the mountains about two year ago. He bought the Carpenter land on the River.'

Fuget had now his first moment of anxiety.

'I hope he ain't much hurt,' he said.

'Hurt!' replied the woman. 'Why, he's dead. They found him a-layin' in his pasture field, where he'd gone to salt his cattle.'

Fuget stood for a moment, nodding his head slowly.

'Well, that's a terrible thing. Who done it?'

The woman flung up her hands.

'That's the mystery,'she said. 'He did n't have any enemies. He was curious, but he was a good neighbor, folks say. They liked him. He lived over there by himself.'

Fuget ventured a query.

'Did they see any signs of anybody about where they found him?'

'There would n't be any signs in a pasture field,' said the woman, 'an' the person that shot him must have been standin' out in the pasture field, because he was a-layin' a-facin' the river. An' he'd been shot in the back. They could tell that for a certainty,' she added, 'because a bullet tears where it comes out, an' it carries in stuff with it where it goes in.'

Fuget made some further comment, then he held up the pieces of the hoe.

'I come in to get another hoe,' he said. 'I broke the blade on a root.'

Then he went out to the log barn, selected a hoe from a number hanging in a crack of the logs, and returned to the cornfield.

He had now a sense of complete security. Even chance had helped. The turning of the old man in the act of death had diverted inquiry from the direction of the river, where some broken bushes might have indicated his hiding-place. He worked the remainder of the day in the cornfield. He had the profound satisfaction of one who successfully shapes events to a plan. Nevertheless, he found himself pausing, now and then, to consider what it was that Pickens had said. The elimination of all anxieties seemed somehow to have brought this feature of the tragedy forward to the first place. It seized his attention with the persistent interest of a puzzle.

That evening at supper the farmer related the gossip of the countryside. There was nothing in this gossip that gave Fuget the slightest concern. No clue of any character had been observed, and there were no conjectures that remotely approached the truth. Fuget talked of the tragedy without the least restraint. That anxiety which he had feared to feel when the matter would come to be discussed did not present itself. The old wives' tales of tortured conscience and the like, while ho had not believed them, had, nevertheless, given him a certain concern. They were like tales of ghosts, which one could laugh at, but could not disprove until one had slept in the haunted house. He now knew that they were false.

He went to bed with the greatest composure. He was even cheerful. But he did not sleep. His mind seemed unusually clear and active. It reverted to the details of the tragedy, not with any sense of anxiety, hut with a sort of satisfaction, as of one who contemplates an undertaking successfully accomplished. He passed the incidents in review, until he reached the words which Pickens had uttered. And, keenly alert, like a wrestler in condition, his mind began to struggle with that enigma. He endeavored to compose himself to slumber. But he could not. He was intensely awake. His mind formulated all the expressions that might resemble in sounds those words which Pickens seemed to have said, but they were of no service. He turned about in his bed, endeavoring to dismiss the problem. But his mind seemed to go on with it against every effort of his will. He concluded that this sleeplessness was due to the coffee which he had taken at supper, and he determined to abandon the use of it. Now and then he fell asleep, but he seemed almost instantly to awaken. He was glad when the daylight began to appear.

The following night he drank no coffee, and he fell asleep. But some time in the night he awoke again to the besetting puzzle. He sat up in the bed, and determined to dismiss it. He had believed Pickens to say, 'You shall hear from me'; very well then, that was what he had said. And he lay down. But, instantly, upon that decision, there appeared another phase of the puzzle that fascinated his attention. Why had Pickens used that expression? Why should he say, 'You shall hear from me'? He was in the act of death when he spoke. He knew that. The realization of it was in his face. These words were inconsistent with a sense of death.

He lay for a long time, intent upon this new aspect of the matter. Did the dying man intend this as a threat which he expected to carry out? But how could one hear from a dead man. And there arose a medley of all the tales that he had ever heard, relating to messages transmitted to the living from the spirit world. He dismissed these tales as inconsistent with the sane experiences of men. But the effect of them, which he had received as a child, he could not dismiss. Moreover, how could one be certain that, under some peculiar conditions, such messages were not transmitted? Learned men were, themselves, not absolutely sure.

And intent upon this thing he remembered that those about to die were said sometimes to catch glimpses of truths ordinarily hidden. Men plucked from death had testified to a supernal activity of the mind. And those who had watched had observed the dying to use words and gestures which indicated a sight and hearing beyond the capacities of life.

He reflected. When Pickens had said, 'You shall hear from me,' it was certain that he meant what he said. Men did not utter idle threats when they were being ejected out of life. The law, ordinarily so careful for the truth, recognized this fact. He had heard that the declarations of those who believed themselves in dissolution, were to be received in courts of law without the sanctity of an oath. It was the common belief that the dying did not lie. Then, if he had heard correctly, this business was not ended. But had he heard correctly? And here the abominable thing turned back upon itself. And he began again on this interminable circle, as a fly follows the inside of a bowl, from which it can never escape.

In the realities of daylight, he was able to assail this thing, and, in a measure, overcome it. The dead did not return, and their threats were harmless. But in the insecurity of darkness, it possessed him. In the vast, impenetrable, mysterious night, one could not be so certain. One seemed then on the borderland of life where things moved that did not venture out into the sun, or in the sun became invisible. And, under the cover of this darkness, the dead man might somehow be able to carry out his threat. This was the anxiety that beset him. And in spite of his disbelief and the assurance of his reason he began to expect this message. And he began to wonder from what quarter it would approach him, and at what hour, and in what form. This thing appalled him: that one, whom he did not fear from the activity of life, should thus disturb him from the impotency of death.

Fuget was preparing quietly to leave the country when, about a week later, the farmer inquired if he wished to go with him, on that morning, to the county seat. It was the day on which the circuit court convened,—'court day,'—and by custom the country people assembled in the village. The farmer had been drawn on the grand jury.

'The judge will be chargin' us about the Pickens murder,' he said. 'You'd better go in an' hear him; the judge is a fine speaker.'

It was the custom of these circuit judges to direct the attention of the grand jury to any conspicuous crime, and they usually availed themselves of this custom to harangue the people.

That curiosity which moved Fuget to seek the earliest news of the murder now urged him to hear what the judge would say, and he went with the farmer to the village. The court-room was crowded. Fuget remained all the afternoon seated on one of the benches. After the assembling of the grand jury, the judge began his charge. He reviewed the incidents of the assassination. Fuget found himself following these details. Under the speaker's dramatic touch the thing took on a more sinister aspect.

It could not avail the assassin that no human eye had seen him at his deadly work. By this act of violence he had involved himself with mysterious agencies that would not permit him to maintain his secret. It was in vain that human ingenuity strove against these influences. One might thrust his secret into the darkness, but he could not compel the darkness to retain it. These agencies would presently expel it into the light: as one could cast the body of the dead into the sea, but could not force the sea to receive it; it would be there when he returned, ghastly on the sand. And the hideous danger was that one never could tell at what hour, or in what place, or by what means, these mysterious agencies would reveal the thing which he had hidden.

While the judge spoke, Fuget thought of the strange words which Pickens had uttered, and he felt a sense of insecurity. He moved uneasily in his seat, and the perspiration dampened his body. When the court adjourned, he hurried out. He passed through the swinging doors of the court-room, and descended the stairway into the corridor below. As he elbowed his way through the crowd, he thought some one called out his name, 'Henry Fuget,' and instinctively he stopped, and turned around toward the stairway. But no one in the crowd coming down seemed to regard him, and he hurried away.

He was now alarmed, and he determined to leave the country at once. He returned with the farmer. That night, alone in the loft of the farmhouse, he packed his possessions into a bundle and sat down on the bed to wait until the family below him should be asleep. He did not cease to consider this extraordinary incident. And it presently occurred to him that if some one had, in fact, recognized him, and he should now flee in the night, his guilt would be conclusively indicated. And side by side with that suggestion, there arose another. Had he, in fact, heard a human tongue call out his name? He labored to recall the sounds which he seemed to have heard, as he had labored to recall those which Pickens had uttered. The voice had seemed to him thin and high. Was it a human voice?

He rose, unpacked the bundle, and went over to the window. The night seemed strange to him. The air was hard and bright, thin clouds were moving, a pale moonlight descended now and then on the world. There was silence. Every living thing seemed to have departed out of life. He thought of all the persons whom he had this day seen alert and alive, as now no better than dead men, lying unconscious, while the earth turned under them in this ghostly light. And it seemed to him a thing of no greater wonder, that the dead should appear or utter voices, than that these innumerable bodies, prone and motionless, should again reënter into life.

The following morning the farmer reassured him. No witness had come before the grand jury, and the prosecuting attorney had no evidence to offer.

'I reckon nobody will ever know who killed ol' Pickens,' he said. Then he added, 'The grand jury's goin' to set pretty late, an' I may have to stay in town to-night. I wish you 'd go in with me, an' bring the horse home.'

Fuget could not refuse, and he returned to the village. Again he sat all day in the crowded court-room. Loss of sleep and fatigue overcame him, and occasionally, in the heat of the room, in spite of his anxiety, he would almost fall asleep. And at such times he would start up, fearful lest some word or gesture should escape him. And always, when the judge turned in his chair, or an attorney spoke, he was anxious. And when any one passed the bench on which he sat, he appeared to be watching something in the opposite corner of the court-room, or, by accident, to screen his face with his hat.

But as the day advanced, he became reassured, and when the court adjourned he went out quietly with the crowd. On the stairway and in the corridor below, he was anxious lest he should again hear his name called out. But when it did not occur and he approached the exit of the court-house, his equanimity returned. On the steps, in the sun, he stopped and wiped his face with his sleeve. He seemed to have escaped out of peril, as through a door. He was glad now of the good judgment that had turned him back from flight, and of the incident that had brought him here to face the thing that he had feared. He came forth, like one who had braved a gesticulating spectre and found its threatening body to be harmless and impalpable.

He descended the long stone steps leading down from the portico of the ancient court-house, with that sense of buoyant freedom peculiar to those who are lifted out of danger. At the street, as he was about to walk away, some one touched him on the shoulder. He turned. The sheriff of the county was beside him.

'Will you just step into the Squire's office,' he said.

Fuget was appalled.

'Me!' he stammered. 'What does the Squire want with me?'

But obedient to the command, he followed the sheriff into the basement of the court-house, and through a corridor into the office of the justice of the peace. Here he found himself come into the presence of the prosecuting attorney, the justice, and a little man with sharp black eyes, and a thin, clean-shaven face. He remembered having seen this man enter the courtroom, on the first day, while the judge was speaking. He had carried then a pair of saddle-pockets over his arm and had seemed to be a stranger, for he had stopped at the door and looked about, as if the court-room were unfamiliar to him. Fuget had observed this incident, as with painful attention he had observed every incident occurring in the court-room during these two days of stress. He had not seen this man again. But he now distinctly recalled him.

The justice of the peace sat at a table. Before him lay a printed paper, certain blank lines of which had been written in with a pen. He put his hand on this paper; then he spoke.

'Is your name Henry Fuget?' he said.

Fuget looked around him without moving his head, swiftly, furtively. like an animal penned into a corner. The eyes of the others were on him. They seemed to know all the details of some mysterious transaction that had led up to this question, and of which he was ignorant. He felt that he had entered some obscure trap, the deadly peril of which these men had cunningly hidden that he might the more easily step into it. Nevertheless, he realized that he could not remain silent.

'No, sir,' he said, 'my name's Silas Williams.' Then he added, 'I work for Dan'l Sheets, out on the ten-mile road. You can ask him; he'll tell you.'

The justice continued, as though following a certain formula,—

'Did you know Samuel Pickens?'

'No, sir.'

The justice seemed to consult a memorandum in pencil on the margin of the written paper.

'Were you not convicted of arson, on the testimony of Samuel Pickens, and sentenced to the penitentiary; and have you not repeatedly threatened to kill him when your term of penal servitude should have expired?'

Fuget was now greatly alarmed. How did these exact facts come to be known in this distant community? Here Pickens alone knew them, and he was dead. He saw that his security lay in denying that he was Henry Fuget.

'No, sir,' he said.

'And your name's not Henry Fuget?'

'No, sir.'

The justice turned to the stranger.

'This man denies that he is Henry Fuget,' he said.

Then it was that the words were uttered that dispossessed the prisoner of composure, and cast him into panic.

'If the communication which I have received from Samuel Pickens is true,' said the stranger, 'Henry Fuget has the scar of a gunshot wound on his right arm above the elbow.'

The muscles of Fuget's face relaxed. His mouth fell into a baggy gaping. Then he faltered the query that possessed him.

'Did you hear from Sam Pickens?'

'Yes.'

'After he was dead?’

The stranger reflected. 'Yes,' he said. 'Pickens was dead then.'

Fuget's mouth remained open. A sense of disaster, complete and utter, descended on him. The dead man had carried out his terrible threat. He began to stammer, unconscious that he was completing his ruin.

'That's what he said—that's what he said when I shot him—but I thought I'd hear,—I did n't think somebody else would hear.'

He caught hold of the table with his hand, and lowered himself into a chair. But he continued to regard this sinister stranger. And presently he spoke again.

'How did he tell you?' he said.

A crowd had begun to gather at the door and at the windows,—a rumor had gone out.

The stranger put his hand into his pocket, and drew from it a folded paper. 'I will tell you,' he said. 'I am an attorney at law; my name is Gordon, and I reside in Georgia. On the third day of November, I received this paper, inclosed in an envelope, and addressed to me. It was dated in October, but when I got it, Pickens was dead.' He unfolded the paper and began to read in a thin, high-pitched voice:—

 

In the name of God, Amen! I, Samuel Pickens, do make, publish, and declare this to be my last will and testament. I hereby appoint Horatio Gordon my executor, and I direct and charge him as follows, to wit: Henry Fuget, a convict about to be discharged from the penitentiary of Georgia, has repeatedly threatened my life. I have come here to avoid him, but I fear that he will follow and kill me. Now, therefore, if I should be found dead, be it known that Henry Fuget is the assassin, and I direct my executor to expend the sum of one thousand dollars in order to bring him to the gallows. Fuget is to be known by a scar on the fleshy part of his right arm where he was shot in an attempt to escape from the penitentiary. The residue of my estate, both real and personal, I bequeath to my beloved daughter, Selina Pickens, now Mrs. Jonathan Clayton, of Jackson, Miss.

Given under my hand and seal, Oct. 14, 1850.

Saatuel Pickens. (Seal)

 

The stranger looked up from the paper.

'When I heard that Pickens was dead,' he said, 'I came here immediately. The circuit court was sitting when I arrived. It occurred to me that the assassin might be present in this crowd of people. To determine that, I placed myself at the head of the stairway, and as the crowd was going out, I called the name. This man turned, and I knew then that he was Henry Fuget.'

Fuget sat with his hands on the arms of the chair, his big body thrown loosely forward, his eyes on the stranger. Slowly the thing came to him. The atmosphere of ghostly and supernatural agencies receded. He saw that he had been trapped by his own fancy. The hand that had choked this confession out of him had been born of his own flesh; the bones of it, the sinews of it, he had himself provided.

And a madness seized him. He sprang up, and rushed out of the door. The crowd gave way before the bulk of this infuriated man. But the corridor was narrow, and as he fought his way, persons began to seize him. He staggered out into the courtyard. The crowd of people wedged him in, clung to him, and bore him down. He rose. Under the mass of men who had thrown themselves upon him, the bones of his legs seemed about to snap; his muscles to burst; his vertebrae to crumble. For a dozen steps he advanced with this crushing burden, but every moment it increased, and finally he fell.