________________________________________________
_ From a letter to Mrs. Stillman, dated merely "Tuesday."
Fetlock Jones was put under lock and key in an unoccupied log cabin, and
left there to await his trial. Constable Harris provided him with a
couple of days' rations, instructed him to keep a good guard over
himself, and promised to look in on him as soon as further supplies
should be due.
Next morning a score of us went with Hillyer, out of friendship, and
helped him bury his late relative, the unlamented Buckner, and I acted as
first assistant pall-bearer, Hillyer acting as chief. Just as we had
finished our labors a ragged and melancholy stranger, carrying an old
hand-bag, limped by with his head down, and I caught the scent I had
chased around the globe! It was the odor of Paradise to my perishing
hope!
In a moment I was at his side and had laid a gentle hand upon his
shoulder. He slumped to the ground as if a stroke of lightning had
withered him in his tracks; and as the boys came running he struggled to
his knees and put up his pleading hands to me, and out of his chattering
jaws he begged me to persecute him no more, and said:
"You have hunted me around the world, Sherlock Holmes, yet God is my
witness I have never done any man harm!"
A glance at his wild eyes showed us that he was insane. That was my
work, mother! The tidings of your death can some day repeat the misery I
felt in that moment, but nothing else can ever do it. The boys lifted
him up, and gathered about him, and were full of pity of him, and said
the gentlest and touchingest things to him, and said cheer up and don't
be troubled, he was among friends now, and they would take care of him,
and protect him, and hang any man that laid a hand on him. They are just
like so many mothers, the rough mining-camp boys are, when you wake up
the south side of their hearts; yes, and just like so many reckless and
unreasoning children when you wake up the opposite of that muscle. They
did everything they could think of to comfort him, but nothing succeeded
until Wells-Fargo Ferguson, who is a clever strategist, said:
"If it's only Sherlock Holmes that's troubling you, you needn't worry any
more."
"Why?" asked the forlorn lunatic, eagerly.
"Because he's dead again."
"Dead! Dead! Oh, don't trifle with a poor wreck like me. Is he dead?
On honor, now--is he telling me true, boys?"
"True as you're standing there!" said Ham Sandwich, and they all backed
up the statement in a body.
"They hung him in San Bernardino last week," added Ferguson, clinching
the matter, "whilst he was searching around after you. Mistook him for
another man. They're sorry, but they can't help it now."
"They're a-building him a monument," said Ham Sandwich, with the air of a
person who had contributed to it, and knew.
"James Walker" drew a deep sigh--evidently a sigh of relief--and said
nothing; but his eyes lost something of their wildness, his countenance
cleared visibly, and its drawn look relaxed a little. We all went to our
cabin, and the boys cooked him the best dinner the camp could furnish the
materials for, and while they were about it Hillyer and I outfitted him
from hat to shoe-leather with new clothes of ours, and made a comely and
presentable old gentleman of him. "Old" is the right word, and a pity,
too: old by the droop of him, and the frost upon his hair, and the marks
which sorrow and distress have left upon his face; though he is only in
his prime in the matter of years. While he ate, we smoked and chatted;
and when he was finishing he found his voice at last, and of his own
accord broke out with his personal history. I cannot furnish his exact
words, but I will come as near it as I can.
THE "WRONG MAN'S" STORY
It happened like this: I was in Denver. I had been there many years;
sometimes I remember how many, sometimes I don't--but it isn't any
matter. All of a sudden I got a notice to leave, or I would be exposed
for a horrible crime committed long before--years and years before--in
the East.
I knew about that crime, but I was not the criminal; it was a cousin of
mine of the same name. What should I better do? My head was all
disordered by fear, and I didn't know. I was allowed very little time--
only one day, I think it was. I would be ruined if I was published, and
the people would lynch me, and not believe what I said. It is always the
way with lynchings: when they find out it is a mistake they are sorry,
but it is too late--the same as it was with Mr. Holmes, you see. So I
said I would sell out and get money to live on, and run away until it
blew over and I could come back with my proofs. Then I escaped in the
night and went a long way off in the mountains somewhere, and lived
disguised and had a false name.
I got more and more troubled and worried, and my troubles made me see
spirits and hear voices, and I could not think straight and clear on any
subject, but got confused and involved and had to give it up, because my
head hurt so. It got to be worse and worse; more spirits and more
voices. They were about me all the time; at first only in the night,
then in the day too. They were always whispering around my bed and
plotting against me, and it broke my sleep and kept me fagged out,
because I got no good rest.
And then came the worst. One night the whispers said, "We'll never
manage, because we can't see him, and so can't point him out to the
people."
They sighed; then one said: "We must bring Sherlock Holmes. He can be
here in twelve days."
They all agreed, and whispered and jibbered with joy. But my heart
broke; for I had read about that man, and knew what it would be to have
him upon my track, with his superhuman penetration and tireless energies.
The spirits went away to fetch him, and I got up at once in the middle of
the night and fled away, carrying nothing but the hand-bag that had my
money in it--thirty thousand dollars; two-thirds of it are in the bag
there yet. It was forty days before that man caught up on my track.
I just escaped. From habit he had written his real name on a tavern
register, but had scratched it out and written "Dagget Barclay" in the
place of it. But fear gives you a watchful eye and keen, and I read the
true name through the scratches, and fled like a deer.
He has hunted me all over this world for three years and a half--the
Pacific states, Australasia, India--everywhere you can think of; then
back to Mexico and up to California again, giving me hardly any rest; but
that name on the registers always saved me, and what is left of me is
alive yet. And I am so tired! A cruel time he has given me, yet I give
you my honor I have never harmed him nor any man.
That was the end of the story, and it stirred those boys to blood-heat,
he sure of it. As for me--each word burnt a hole in me where it struck.
We voted that the old man should bunk with us, and be my guest and
Hillyer's. I shall keep my own counsel, naturally; but as soon as he is
well rested and nourished, I shall take him to Denver and rehabilitate
his fortunes.
The boys gave the old fellow the bone-smashing good-fellowship handshake
of the mines, and then scattered away to spread the news.
At dawn next morning Wells-Fargo Ferguson and Ham Sandwich called us
softly out, and said, privately:
"That news about the way that old stranger has been treated has spread
all around, and the camps are up. They are piling in from everywhere,
and are going to lynch the P'fessor. Constable Harris is in a dead funk,
and has telephoned the sheriff. Come along!"
We started on a run. The others were privileged to feel as they chose,
but in my heart's privacy I hoped the sheriff would arrive in time; for I
had small desire that Sherlock Holmes should hang for my deeds, as you
can easily believe. I had heard a good deal about the sheriff, but for
reassurance's sake I asked:
"Can he stop a mob?"
"Can he stop a mob! Can Jack Fairfax stop a mob! Well, I should smile!
Ex-desperado--nineteen scalps on his string. Can he! Oh, I say!"
As we tore up the gulch, distant cries and shouts and yells rose faintly
on the still air, and grew steadily in strength as we raced along. Roar
after roar burst out, stronger and stronger, nearer and nearer; and at
last, when we closed up upon the multitude massed in the open area in
front of the tavern, the crash of sound was deafening. Some brutal
roughs from Daly's gorge had Holmes in their grip, and he was the calmest
man there; a contemptuous smile played about his lips, and if any fear of
death was in his British heart, his iron personality was master of it and
no sign of it was allowed to appear.
"Come to a vote, men!" This from one of the Daly gang, Shadbelly Higgins.
"Quick! is it hang, or shoot?"
"Neither!" shouted one of his comrades. "He'll be alive again in a week;
burning's the only permanency for him."
The gangs from all the outlying camps burst out in a thundercrash of
approval, and went struggling and surging toward the prisoner, and closed
around him, shouting, "Fire! fire's the ticket!" They dragged him to the
horse-post, backed him against it, chained him to it, and piled wood and
pine cones around him waist-deep. Still the strong face did not blench,
and still the scornful smile played about the thin lips.
"A match! fetch a match!"
Shadbelly struck it, shaded it with his hand, stooped, and held it under
a pine cone. A deep silence fell upon the mob. The cone caught, a tiny
flame flickered about it a moment or two. I seemed to catch the sound of
distant hoofs--it grew more distinct--still more and more distinct, more
and more definite, but the absorbed crowd did not appear to notice it.
The match went out. The man struck another, stooped, and again the flame
rose; this time it took hold and began to spread--here and there men
turned away their faces. The executioner stood with the charred match in
his fingers, watching his work. The hoof-beats turned a projecting crag,
and now they came thundering down upon us. Almost the next moment there
was a shout:
"The sheriff!"
And straightway he came tearing into the midst, stood his horse almost on
his hind feet, and said:
"Fall back, you gutter-snipes!"
He was obeyed. By all but their leader. He stood his ground, and his
hand went to his revolver. The sheriff covered him promptly, and said:
"Drop your hand, you parlor desperado. Kick the fire away. Now unchain
the stranger."
The parlor desperado obeyed. Then the sheriff made a speech; sitting his
horse at martial ease, and not warming his words with any touch of fire,
but delivering them in a measured and deliberate way, and in a tone which
harmonized with their character and made them impressively disrespectful.
"You're a nice lot--now ain't you? Just about eligible to travel with
this bilk here--Shadbelly Higgins--this loud-mouthed sneak that shoots
people in the back and calls himself a desperado. If there's anything I
do particularly despise, it's a lynching mob; I've never seen one that
had a man in it. It has to tally up a hundred against one before it can
pump up pluck enough to tackle a sick tailor. It's made up of cowards,
and so is the community that breeds it; and ninety-nine times out of a
hundred the sheriff's another one." He paused--apparently to turn that
last idea over in his mind and taste the juice of it--then he went on:
"The sheriff that lets a mob take a prisoner away from him is the lowest-
down coward there is. By the statistics there was a hundred and eighty-
two of them drawing sneak pay in America last year. By the way it's
going, pretty soon there 'll be a new disease in the doctor-books--
sheriff complaint." That idea pleased him--any one could see it.
"People will say, 'Sheriff sick again?' 'Yes; got the same old thing.'
And next there 'll be a new title. People won't say, 'He's running for
sheriff of Rapaho County,' for instance; they'll say, 'He's running for
Coward of Rapaho.' Lord, the idea of a grown-up person being afraid of a
lynch mob!"
He turned an eye on the captive, and said, "Stranger, who are you, and
what have you been doing?"
"My name is Sherlock Holmes, and I have not been doing anything."
It was wonderful, the impression which the sound of that name made on the
sheriff, notwithstanding he must have come posted. He spoke up with
feeling, and said it was a blot on the county that a man whose marvelous
exploits had filled the world with their fame and their ingenuity, and
whose histories of them had won every reader's heart by the brilliancy
and charm of their literary setting, should be visited under the Stars
and Stripes by an outrage like this. He apologized in the name of the
whole nation, and made Holmes a most handsome bow, and told Constable
Harris to see him to his quarters, and hold himself personally
responsible if he was molested again. Then he turned to the mob and
said:
"Hunt your holes, you scum!" which they did; then he said: "Follow me,
Shadbelly; I'll take care of your case myself. No--keep your popgun;
whenever I see the day that I'll be afraid to have you behind me with
that thing, it 'll be time for me to join last year's hundred and eighty-
two"; and he rode off in a walk, Shadbelly following.
When we were on our way back to our cabin, toward breakfast-time, we ran
upon the news that Fetlock Jones had escaped from his lock-up in the
night and is gone! Nobody is sorry. Let his uncle track him out if he
likes; it is in his line; the camp is not interested. _
Read next: PART II: CHAPTER V
Read previous: PART II: CHAPTER III
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