The Golden Pears/Chapter 12
XII
Clinchell found Rip Morlung in jail, waiting for trial and anxious to escape. The planter soon learned that Rip had held his peace as regards his reason for tearing up Lunmer Andrest's shanty-boat, which had been the direct cause of the marauder's capture and imprisonment. Whatever people might think, Morlung had remained true to his employer.
The two had plenty of time to plan and plot in a corner of the corridor, clear of the other prisoners. They conferred between the visits of the lawyers whom old Clinchell had engaged in the effort to secure his freedom—which was proving unexpectedly difficult, for Judge Darkin refused to lower the bond or to accept any sort of straw bail.
For a long time the political powers in Cypress County had been hoping for a chance to bring down old Clinchell, whose autocratic ideas had grown more and more insufferable. The attack on the Deerport National Bank hurt local pride in the town, where President Lesgar was every man's friend.
Rich as he was, Clinchell had stepped too far over the bounds, and the Dark Bend swamps had lost, for a time at least, their influence in politics. The very quality of the food served to Clinchell was significant to the wilful man, for it was precisely the same as that of the other white prisoners. It did him no good to complain. After one outburst he held his peace and consulted with the more experienced Morlung, who had long been used to having every man's hand against him.
One day Cashier Dovent, of the Planter Bank at River Bridge, made a post-haste trip down to Deerport for a conference with Clinchell. He brought with him a sheaf of papers showing various angles of the bank's condition. He asked for and obtained a private interview with Clinchell in the sheriff's office.
"You see how it is," Dovent summed up. "Those Mendova banks and trust companies have called in all their loans to us. Look where that leaves us!"
"Sho!" Clinchell gasped, his eyes staring at the balance against the Planter Bank. "What—what has happened?"
"I called them up on the telephone," Dovent declared hesitatingly, "and Mr. Forwell, of the Chickasaw Ridge, said they'd heard you were in jail, and they wouldn't take any more chances with your—with your—"
"With my what?" demanded Clinchell. "What are you holding out on me?"
"With your bad temper, sir!"
Clinchell gasped. His jaw dropped.
"I ain't in jail for stealing!" he declared. Dovent made no comment.
"I ain't touched another man's dollar, have I? Ain't I honorable, and don't I pay my debts? What did anybody else say?"
"Colfex, of the Deep Waterway, said—he said—"
"Well, what did he say?"
"He said he'd heard you gave a mortgage on the timber on cut-over lands, and—"
"But that was business, wasn't it?" Clinchell demanded. "Wasn't that Lesgar's lookout?"
"I suggested that to them, and they said it was their lookout to get their money out of the Planter and Logging banks just as soon as the good Lord would let them. That's what they said! We have till tomorrow afternoon, Mendova closing-time, to take up those papers, or you can see what 'll happen, sir. The whole darned caboodle goes up!"
"Well, I'm going to kill somebody for this!" Clinchell roared. "It's that trifling Lesgar—he's gone to Mendova with this Cypress County and Dark Bend business! It's our private business around here, and he's—he's gone and brought in strangers that it isn't any business of!"
Clinchell paced up and down the iron-toothed sheriff's office, a panther in a cage. He could see now why no one would go on his peace bond, and why the county politicians were so independent. They had drawn a line around him and left him outside of their powers and activities.
For a time his anger was deep and overwhelming; but as he looked into the predicament in which his overbearing disregard of other people had placed him, he realized that he was straining at the end of his rope just when he thought he held the reins to the bits in countless other men's jaws. The curb of humanity had been applied to his selfishness, and it was an effective curb.
Instead of crushing Lesgar and adding another bank to his collection, both his own banks were menaced.
More than that, he had stretched his assets and mortgaged his lands in order to add to his income and increase his opportunities for wealth. Over in Mendova there were personal notes secured upon his thousand-acre cotton-plantation, and hardly any of his good timber but was covered by conservative mortgages. In all, these obligations were probably less than one-third of the value of his property; but in a foreclosure sale his lands might go for much less than they were really worth. Clinchell had forced mortgage sales too often not to know what they meant to the victim. He choked and writhed in mental agony.
"I want that pistol you carry—understand?" he whispered in Dovent's ear.
The cashier handed it over with a swift gesture. Clinchell slipped it into his pocket and went on talking about the steps that should be taken with the Mendova financial institutions.
"Open that private box of mine," Clinchell ordered. "There's some stocks and bonds in that. Shift them and get telegraph funds for them in Mendova. They'll take care of about half that the banks owe, but there'll still be about a hundred thousand that I've got to take care of. They're going to break me, if they can, 'count of the clause in the mortgage notes that lets them sell me out when the value of the holdings drops and they think they'll lose their funds. They'll have a one-man mortgage sale, and manage to wipe me out! They're laying for me, and I didn't know it. Well, get out of here, now!"
Dovent departed, and Clinchell retired to the corridor, where he paced up and down till supper-time.
It had been a busy day for the jail trusties. They had killed three big hogs, and as night was coming on, with rain threatening, they hung the hogs in the outside jail entrance, leaving the steel-plate door open; but the inside barred door was locked, as usual.
After supper the prisoners soon settled down for the night. Their snoring in various notes filled the small building.
Toward midnight Morlung's cell door opened magically, for his clever fingers had contrived keys out of the flat elm splints of a chair-bottom. He opened old Clinchell's cell a half-minute later.
They dumped the big soft-coal stove in the corridor, lifted out the grate, and dropped it into the water-pail to cool it. Then they took the grate, and catching the nuts of the barred door in the interstices of the grate-bars, they rapidly wrenched the door from its hinges and opened the way to freedom.
Slipping out into the dripping street, the two escaping prisoners scurried around the corners till they were out of town, and then they sogged their way northward toward their own familiar Dark Bend swamps. Durm Clinchell had never broken jail before, and he was angry now to think that he had to do it. Free, and in his own timber-brakes, he could defy the world, he told himself. He would let no man rob him of his hard-earned lands!
That was his idea—to hold the plantation and timber-lands by force against any invader. Rip Morlung promised to help him. Rip said he knew an army of men that he could get to help the old planter to protect himself from the wanton assaults of his enemies.
Old Durm Clinchell had lost his perspective on affairs. He had been his own law for so long that he could not submit to a higher one.
When he reached his house, in the early morning, he ordered out his servants and made ready for war with his enemies. He had ammunition and firearms in plenty, and he had all the guns cleaned and loaded. He decided where he would have his secret headquarters out in the brake, where no one could ever find him—not in a thousand years, he fondly told Morlung, who agreed half-heartedly. Rip had lately had an experience with a hiding-place supposed to be absolutely secure against pursuit!
Nevertheless, Morlung entered with zest into the affair, for he would rather be free and in the Dark Bend swamps than sitting day after day there in the Deerport jail.
At dawn they rode away with their weapons. Clinchell warned the house-servants to keep their mouths shut, and gave one of his men full instructions as to keeping him supplied and informed.
"I'll fight them till I die!" Clinchell declared. "They can't rob me thataway!"
Over a day the tables had been turned on him, but he did not realize his situation. Angry and desperate, he believed what he said. But the next afternoon, when his trusted man slipped out into the brake and met him, the servant said:
"They're looking for you! I brought your papers and mail, same as you told me."
The first page of the Mendova Chronicle contained a long account of Durm Clinchell's flight from the jail at Deerport, in company with Rip Morlung, a swamp desperado. Clinchell laughed when he read the account of the escape; but when he saw the subsequent paragraphs he turned pale, for one of them said:
Clinchell formerly owned a large area of land in the Dark Bend swamps, but his extravagances have led to the falling of nearly if not quite all his property into the hands of Mendova financial institutions, which are said to be pooling their interests for the purpose of developing the land under modern conditions. Clinchell was at one time reputed to be worth more than half a million dollars, but his lawless behavior led to his undoing. He was tried four times for homicide during the heyday of his life. Recently he attempted to follow out his policy of violence, only to meet a quiet and unassuming youth of splendid character and unflinching courage, who brought him to Deerport and demanded that he be put under an adequate peace bond of fifty thousand dollars, which was done. Clinchell's inability to obtain proper surety for his bond compelled his incarceration. He rode to his mansion as soon as he escaped, secured large quantities of ammunition and firearms, and is now out in the swamps, hiding with other desperadoes.
With other desperadoes! Formerly owned a large area of land! Clinchell choked as he read. He had made such announcements in the old days, covering his schemes to use the extremity of the law against small holders of property whom he had driven to desperation. It dawned on him in that hour what a weak man he was, after all, and how little chance he had against the machinery of social order.
Hiding with other desperadoes! That was true. Old Durm Clinchell looked over his shoulder as he slunk away in the big timber of the Dark Bend brakes. He did not know at what minute he might be fired upon by some reward-seeker. He did not know when some one, seeing him a hunted fugitive, might shoot him down in revenge for some past grievance.
Furtive and frightened, Clinchell fled into the depths of a mass of cane where Rip Morlung and he were keeping house in a tiny shack, in constant terror lest their gunshots, as they killed a squirrel or wild turkey for food, should bring down upon them an overwhelming sheriff's posse.
Realizing what had befallen him, Clinchell broke down. He lost his nerve. His hands trembled. Rip Morlung, returning from a foraging expedition, found his fellow outlaw lying sick of fever in the shack. He dosed him with quinin and whisky, and grew more and more alarmed as the old man's voice whispered or yelled in delirium.
Morlung—who at least had the virtue of loyalty to a comrade—did not know what he ought to do. If he left Clinchell lying there the old man might die, and that wouldn't be good sense. If he took him in and had him doctored, that would be surrendering him to the authorities—which would be base treachery, according to the code of the timber-brake scouters.
"He's got to have a doctor!" Morlung decided. "If I cayn't take him to one, I got to go get one!"
With that, Rip bound old Clinchell hand and foot and lashed him to the shack posts, so that the delirious man could not escape into the woods, where he would certainly be lost and perish. Then Rip set forth to the brake where they had hidden their horses. Taking Clinchell's big saddle-animal, he galloped through the timber to the St. Francis Trace and followed it down to Deerport, the one town he knew well.
He arrived at Deerport after dark and tied his horse at the edge of town, while he sneaked through the back streets and across vacant lots till he arrived at the back door of Dr. Surey, famous in the bottoms for his skill with fevers and agues.
"I 'low I want to see the doctor," Rip told the mammy who answered his rap.
"Sho! Git around to de office door, pore white trash, you!" the old negress cried.
Morlung, abashed, slunk around to the little office-building in the yard corner. He stepped into the outer room and then into the inner office.
"Doctor," he whispered, "hands up! Git your medicine-bottles, an' a lot of 'em! Don' you open your danged haid!"
Dr. Surey's jaw dropped, and then he smiled into the revolver muzzle.
"Hello, Rip!" he greeted. "Old Clinchell's sick, eh?"
"Why—yas, suh! Git them bottles!"
"Hold your horses and I'll be with you in a jiffy. What did that old fool go and sleep out in the swamps for, this time of year? Might have known he'd get a shakebone fever, old as he is!"
Rip started to go to his horse, but Dr. Surey refused.
"I'm running an automobile these days, and we'll go in that," he said.
So they rode out into the Dark Bend, and Rip brought the doctor to the cane-brake refuge.
"Rip," Surey declared, after an examination of the sick man, "there's one way of saving the old chap's life—that's to take him home and put him in a feather-bed. It's up to you. Of course, the sheriff will get him."
"I—you'll have to tell me what to do," Rip answered helplessly. "I'd fight for him, but if he'd die—"
"He'll surely die. I've 'tended him for twenty years. He's a right sick man, Rip," the doctor declared. "The best job you ever did was to bring me out here."
"Then I'll pack him back to the plantation." Rip shook his head. "If he wasn't so sick, forty posses couldn't take him away from me!"
"That's the best way, Rip. You needn't go clear in—I'll take him the last lap."
So they packed the sick and defeated old planter out to the mansion. Rip rode across the dark clearing to the very gate, and then vanished in the gloom as the servants ran down to answer the doctor's shout.
They carried the old master up into his room, and there the doctor fought with his fever and pneumonia all that night and all the next day. In mid-afternoon Sue Belle and her aunt arrived with Lunmer Andrest from Provell.
Andrest's own neighbors hardly knew him, with his broad-brimmed black hat, his long black coat, his tan gloves, his white collar, laundered shirt, and black leather boots. They stared at him wonderingly as he left the saddle of a horse and hurried up the mound steps with Sue Belle.
Andrest took charge of the plantation affairs. He ordered Clinchell's overseer to continue picking the cotton. When the man demanded on what authority, Andrest calmly assured him:
"I've foreclosed a mortgage and taken the farm over."
He was no longer a shanty-boat swamp-angel, but a quality person in the bottoms.
When President Lesgar and Cashier Urgone rode out from Deerport to congratulate him, and to thank him for making new arrangements for the Deerport National Bank with the Logging and Planter institutions, they wanted to know how in the world it had happened.
"Sho!" Andrest exclaimed, embarrassed by their congratulations. "All there was to it was that those little tricks I found in Deer Hoof River were pearls, and worth a heap of money. Sue Belle found it out, showing two that I gave her—but she's going to keep those. I sold some of what I had; the rest are in a safe-deposit box. Then we heard how they were closing down on old Durm, and him scouting out in the brake. I took up some mortgages, paying cash, and one or two of the Mendova banks went in with me. The Mendova bank folks were mighty friendly, and I got them to let up on the Planter and Logging banks—"
"And the Planter and Logging people couldn't tell us quick enough they'd let up on us!" Urgone interrupted.
"Yes, I told 'em to step lively," Andrest added. "But I expect I ought to thank you, 'stead of you thanking me. How could I do it if you hadn't showed me?"
"I told you it would pay, spreading bank knowledge around among people!" Urgone said, turning to Lesgar.
"Yes, sir; you said it would pay to run a school of finance, and it did!"
"I want to be friendly with you gentlemen," Andrest continued shyly. "I brought over two little tricks for you. They don't amount to much, just little shell tricks out of Deer Hoof River that we had set over to Mendova. They're nice ones, they said—"
"Beauties!" the two bankers exclaimed.
"That's what they call pearls!" Lesgar added. "I used to play with them when I was a boy, finding them in clam-shells. If I'd only known then!"
"I expect you and Sue Belle will be having a big wedding one of these days, Lun, and we'll all be invited?" Urgone smilingly suggested.
"Shucks!" Andrest grinned. "We're done married already! When the old man gets out of his lung congestion we'll have a big barbecue in these swamps, you bet! But Sheriff Ferris 'll have to forget that he's an officer of the law for a while. You see how it is—there'll be Dark Bend scouters around—"
"He'll forget," Lesgar assured him. "This isn't going to be as dark a bend as it used to be, Andrest!"
THE END