The Man of Last Resort/Once in Jeopardy/Chapter 1
ONCE IN JEOPARDY
I
The sheriff stopped on the steps of the court-house, pushed his straw hat back from his forehead, moved his eyeglasses up a little closer to his fat face, and began to contemplate the limits of his official jurisdiction, with the air of one about to deduce a law.
The little county seat on Tug River slept in a pocket. Behind it and on every side except the river were great mountains, half-hidden by a gigantic cloak of fog. On the opposite side, from the great coal plants of the Norfolk and Western Railroad a counter-canopy of smoke arose, dense and voluminous, and stretched itself like a black hand out over the town and across to the fog of the mountain. Man, it seemed, had conspired with nature to cover up and hide the town of Welch.
“Strange,” drawled the sheriff, “strange, that a white man should be willing to leave a paradise like this, and with river water in his stomach too.” Then he chuckled comfortably.
The sheriff of the county of McDowell was all right. He represented the entire machinery of the law obtaining south of Tug River, and he carried the momentous responsibility with the languid grace of a bank clerk at a charity german.
The sheriff was a Virginian. But, marvel of marvels, he was a Virginian without a title. He was plain W. M. Carter. The statement is not quite accurate. Among the boys he was “White” Carter. But he was no “colonel” and no “major,” and he gloried in the distinction and guarded it well. The sheriff was a comfortably fat man and most genial. His eyes were round, blue, and dreamy, and he never hurried. He was never abrupt or a jarring element. He slipped easily into any position and filled it up without a ripple, as water slips in and fills up the outlines of a vessel.
Still the sheriff was all right. When he looked out of his dreamy blue eyes through his rimless nose glasses at a negro miner who had used his razor as an adjunct to an argument, and mildly requested the negro to accompany him to the confines of the county jail, it was as certain as the advent of death that the negro would obey, and obey without comment. And when the sheriff mounted his “murky dun” horse and passed up into the mountains for the purpose of inducing a moonshiner to come down to civilization and submit his rights to the decision of a judicial tribunal, it was a matter of familiar history that the moonshiner always came.
To the inquiring stranger, no man seemed a native of McDowell.
This impression arose from the fact that the stranger adhered to the railroad and the coal towns which sprang up in its wake, and in these every man came from somewhere. The railroad had brought in the coal companies, and the coal companies had brought in the negroes, and thus towns sprang into existence, and the usual rough, expeditious methods of civilization began. Then came the politician and the adventurer, and mixed in merrily, and from that time forth the county of McDowell was industrial and Republican, and everything “went.”
But a few years back, before the section hands on the Norfolk and Western Railroad cut through from the county of Mercer, there was a population in McDowell that was not Republican, and that did not “go.” They were long-limbed, indolent, and “handy men” in a fight. They made corn whiskey when they pleased, and voted the Democratic ticket when they saw fit, and accounted to no one. The revenue officer came, and looked up at the great mountains covered with the giant oaks of a century, concluded that the laws were not being violated, and so reported to the Government. It was vastly more comfortable than going up into these same mountains not to come down at all, or maybe to come down with a squirrel bullet under the ribs. In his day and generation the revenue officer was a wise man.
Here the citizen was born as it happened, lived as he could, and died as the necessity arose, and the outside world neither knew nor cared nor concerned itself with it. These were not bad people. Morally they were as good as the sun warmed. Their life bred no shams. If they loved each other, they lived together and were happy, and if they hated each other, they fought it out The feud has been usually overdrawn. It existed in truth, but it rarely resulted in anything more than a “fist fight” at a grist mill, but when it grew serious, it grew very serious indeed. The mountaineer always shot to kill. He was no man of half measures; it was a free, open, breezy war, and perhaps it was as healthy fighting as any. At his worst, the native moonshiner was a better man than the imported miner at his best. Up in the fog of the mountains men were killed; down in the smoke of the coke ovens they were murdered; and between the two words there is a distinction as big as the honor of a people.
The “killer” was common in McDowell, but the suicide was not, perhaps because men rarely take their own lives in the mountains. It is a trick of jaded civilization obtaining in congested cities, unknown and unpractised by the dwellers among the hills. Men died in the mountains, but by the hand of others.
So the sheriff was puzzled. That morning the body of Brown Hirst, manager of the Octagon Coal Company, had been picked up in the muddy waters of Tug River, just below the bridge. Above, on the railing of the bridge, his coat and vest had been found, folded and apparently laid carefully over a girder. The bridge was very high above the rocky stream, and the body of the man was badly crushed—almost beyond recognition. The man had evidently jumped from the bridge with the deliberate intention of taking his own life. All this the sheriff had heard as he rode into the town. But rumors are lurid, the sheriff knew, and he concluded to go at once to the prosecuting attorney. He wanted the tale straight from some one who could pry the facts free from the fiction. On the steps of the court-house the sheriff had paused for a moment and made some observations to himself. But a crowd was beginning to gather in the street below, and the sheriff, being fully aware that this portended a demand for his opinion and not being pleased to express one, he turned abruptly and passed into the court-house.
The man of order walked leisurely down the hall to the office of the prosecuting attorney and entered. A thin, red-haired girl was pounding a typewriter with the energy of a two-horse-power engine. Conventionalities were abbreviated in McDowell. The sheriff sauntered in.
“Where's Jeb?” he drawled.
The red-haired girl paused for a moment and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “In there,” she said, “busy.” Then she went on.
Miss McFadden was an economist; she wasted no words. The sheriff threw open the door, and walked into the private office. The prosecuting attorney turned around from the window.
“Hello, White!” he said, “you are the very man I want.”
“Which indicates,” drawled the sheriff, “that you are a young person of great discernment.”
“When one needs horse sense,” said the prosecuting attorney, “your acquaintance is valuable. At other times it is a luxury.”
“Together,” observed the sheriff, mildly, “we create a sort of equoasinus intellectual atmosphere, I suppose.”
The attorney took up a chair and placed it by the window.
“Sit there,” he said, “and listen.” Then he closed the door, and, crossing the room, began to open the safe by his desk.
The sheriff sat down meekly and turned his dreamy blue eyes on the young lawyer.
The prosecuting attorney of the county of McDowell was an imported article. Like the ancient wise men, he came from the East, but the manner of his coming was not quite that of the early sages. The sheriff had come up from the hills of Virginia, while the prosecuting attorney had come up from the sea. Not that this young scion of the law' was a sailor or the son of a sailor, but on a certain summer afternoon at a certain fashionable resort, Fate suddenly threw away the toys with which she had been amusing him, and he immediately realized that the world was a common treadmill instead of a breezy French drag.
It was a stiff shock, but the spine of young Mr. Huron was good, and instead of stepping off the pier, at ten o'clock of that same night he was demonstrating to a certain wealthy senator who had large coal interests in West Virginia that it would be the part of no inconsiderable wisdom to send a bright young fellow with a legal education down into this great mining region for the purpose of investigating the land titles, and for the purpose of keeping an eye on the industries generally, and, as it is said in the law, “for other purposes.”
The old senator was by no means blind to the very slight efficiency of raw material, but he had a heart hidden away under his coat, and at thirty minutes past eleven he was convinced. So J. E. B. Huron came into the county of McDowell, nailed up his shingle, and stepped down into the melée.
The opening chapters of his legal career were blue-tinted histories, but the material in the backbone of young Mr. Huron was splendid material, and he remained. The perception of this man of the law was no dwarfish growth, and he used it like the wise. McDowell was Republican by 1600, and “White” Carter was big boss; 'post hoc ergo propter hoc. J. E. B. Huron was a Republican of ancient affiliation, and more specifically he was right hand man to White Carter. This wisdom was not without its reward. The convention that nominated Carter for sheriff, nominated Huron for prosecuting attorney, and the big boss pulled his man through in spite of splits, and splits, and independent tickets. The prosecuting attorney was a handsome young fellow with a good level head. He knew the value of the sheriff, and he held to him.
The prosecuting attorney took some papers from the safe, drew up a chair, and sat down by the sheriff.
“You have heard of Hirst's suicide?” he said.
The sheriff nodded. “All but the ante-mortem note,” he drawled.
The prosecuting attorney smiled. “How did you know there was a note?”
“Jeb,” said the sheriff, “it is a part of the etiquette of suicide. No man effects his exit without a parting word. It would be bad form, Jeb, frightfully bad form.”
“So you guessed it?”
“No,” replied the sheriff, wearily, “my gray matter was allowed me for the purpose of utility. I concluded.”
The prosecuting attorney selected a letter from the package of papers and passed it over to the sheriff. That official examined the envelope carefully, then he slowly opened it and spread the enclosed letter out on the desk before him.
“Octagon Coal Company,” he read slowly, “Miners and Shippers of Coal and Coke, Welch, West Virginia. Robert Gilmore, President. Brown Hirst, Business Manager. All agreements are contingent upon strikes, accidents, and other delays unavoidable or beyond our control.”
The sheriff paused for a moment. “Written at the office,” he observed, “with a pen, on the company's stationery.”
The guardian of order removed his eyeglasses, wiped them carefully, replaced them on his nose, and continued:
“The officers of the law are informed that I, Brown Hirst, have taken my own life, deliberately and at a time when I am in the full possession of my faculties. My reasons for so doing are of no importance to the law, and are accordingly withheld. This statement is made merely for the purpose of preventing any inference of murder, and for no other purpose.—Brown Hirst.”
The sheriff replaced the letter in its envelope.
“That,” he said, “Is a sensible communication. By the very highest flame on the altar of folly, it is an exceedingly sensible communication. Where did you find it?”
“The coat and vest,” replied the lawyer, “were found lying carefully folded over the railing of the bridge. This letter was in the breast pocket of the coat. Hirst evidently went about his death with great deliberation. Still, I see no motive for suicide.”
“Jeb,” drawled the sheriff, “you are long on motives. Everything must have a motive stamped in red ink on its face. Can't you allow an obscure citizen to change his permanent residence and retain his reasons? The gentleman has said in his communication that his reasons are of no moment to the law. Can't you take the gentleman's word for it? It is n't courteous, Jeb. By the way, where is the corpse of the decedent?”
“Within the sacred jurisdiction of the coroner.”
“And the medical fraternity?” inquired the sheriff.
“Doctor Hart is over in Jacktown putting the finishing touches, it is said, on old Pap Dolan, so the coroner called in a miracle doctor from Cincinnati.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Miracle doctor,” he drawled, “is good—is very good.”
The prosecuting attorney assumed the air of an instructor.
“Healers,” he began, “may be set down, for the purposes of a proper classification, under three great heads or grand divisions, namely, 'yarb doctors,' 'old-line practitioners,' and 'miracle doctors.' Under the first class may be grouped those persons who seek to effect cures by means of the virtues of shrubbery, as well as that vast army of rural healers known along the watershed of the Alleghanies as 'bleeders' and 'steamers.' Under the second great division are included those grave professional persons supposed to be learned in the mysteries of the human economy, who, for a fixed consideration, guess at the ill, and thrust in a chemical: while the third and final division is composed of those mysterious healers who affect to thwart dissolution by means of marvellous knowledge or marvellous skill peculiar to themselves.
“The species of the first grand division infest all that great tract of country bounded by a timber line. The second great class obtains in the cities and villages, and affect buggies, drugs, and sombre dress. The third class is a by-product of congested civilization, and begins usually with a patent lotion, and ends usually with a hospital.”
White Carter waved his fat hand. “But, if your honor, please,” he interrupted, “what did the miracle doctor say?”
“He said,” replied the prosecuting attorney, “that Brown Hirst was a compound fracture from the sustentaculum tali to the tripod of Haller; and from the tripod of Haller to the corpus callossum, he was a simple fracture.”
“Horrible,” drawled the sheriff.
“And he said further,” continued the man of the law, “that the suiciding decedent was probably afflicted with some species of psychical neurosis.”
“Domine miserere!” murmured the guardian of order.
“So the travelling Æsculapius testified, and as the coroner was quite unable to spell the craft terms, he simply wrote down in the record that Doctor Leon Dupey of Cincinnati, after a careful examination, had pronounced Brown Hirst dead, which was far less prolix and entirely true.”
“That coroner,” observed White Carter, “should be United States Senator from Kansas.”
Huron took up the note and put it with the other papers.
“I judge this to be a plain case of suicide,” he said. “I have carefully compared the writing with these letters. It is certainly Brown Hirst's writing. Still, men do not act without a motive, and I see no justifiable motive.”
“Well,” said the sheriff, “I happen to know that financially the Octagon Coal Company is somewhat 'groggy.' How will that answer for a motive ad interim? Or, as the sensible would say, in the meantime?”
“Good,” said the prosecuting attorney. Then he took a pencil from his pocket, and wrote on the back of the decedent's letter “Suicide. Motive—business depression,” and replaced the papers in the safe.
The sheriff arose. “The legend you have subscribed is probably correct,” he drawled, “but the ways of Providence are varied and mystic, and I think I shall make some observations in my own right.” Then he went out.