A Case of Restraint

Judge Braxton walked slowly up the single stony street of Shadwell. His usually cheerful face was overcast, and his heart was full of sadness. They were going to hang Bob Turner; and a hanging, all done by due process of law, was an event in the little mountain town, which lay at the extreme eastern and rough end of the circuit ridden by the judge.

The execution was to be public, and it would probably be the last of its kind in the State, because the new law making all hangings private was to go into effect six months later. But the people of the hills, meanwhile, showed by every sign that they intended to take advantage of the great free show about to occur in Shadwell.

Judge Braxton was sad for several reasons, and this was one of them—the morbid curiosity that could draw men, and women, too, from such great distances and over such difficult roads to see a human being jerked out of life at the end of a rope. It is true they were a rough stock, with few softening influences in their lives, but such facts as these offered little excuse to his merciful heart. An execution should never be turned into a circus.

Judge Braxton was now a “judge” in name only, the term coming from an almost forgotten period of service years ago, but he was by nature—his kind heart would not permit otherwise—and long training a lawyer for the defense. As such he had no equal in his district.

People had been coming into Shadwell all the morning on horseback, in wagons, and on foot, their faces, whether young or old, whether of man or woman, alight with curiosity. None, apparently, took any thought whatever of the poor creature who was to furnish the day’s entertainment, and the fact lay heavy upon Judge Braxton’s mind. He did not blame them in particular—they were under their rough exterior a kindly people—but he did blame human nature.

He walked on up the street toward the court-house, and he was sorry that his business had kept him in Shadwell the day of the hanging. But he would avoid the gruesome scene and leave at twilight, riding all through the summer night, as he often did when the period of great heats came. Morning would find him in the low country, and far from the spot at which Bob Turner’s troubled spirit had taken its departure.

It was very warm. The full day had come and the sun was blazing on the high hills. Shadwell was a poor little town of log or frame houses, and the people had not yet found sufficient enterprise to plant shade-trees in their single street. Judge Braxton was a heavy man, and his brow grew damp and his breath short. He tilted his straw hat on the back of his head and wiped his forehead with a great white handkerchief.

The narrow street was already filling, although the hanging was several hours away, and all the crowd was in holiday dress. The women were clad in gay calico dresses, and their faces were protected by huge sunbonnets of very bright colors. The men who wore coats had already taken them off, and many had begun to trade horses or jack-knives in the street. A huge mountaineer, attired in a suit of checked calico fastened with large glass buttons, attracted admiring attention. Everybody knew him to be a famous moonshiner, but everybody also knew that there was not a revenue officer within thirty miles of Shadwell.

The notice drawn by Means, the moonshiner, was only second to that bestowed upon Judge Braxton. Here, as everywhere, the judge was liked and respected, and many whom he knew, and more whom he did not know, came forward to shake his hand. He received them all with the same smile of genuine welcome. Judge Braxton was a democrat from head to heel, and loved his kind.

“Judge,” said Means, the moonshiner, “if ever I’m arrested for anything you’ve got to come an’ defend, even if you’re a hundred miles away.”

The judge looked quizzically at the yellow-bearded, calico-clad giant who stood before him, the sun’s rays glinting off his glass buttons.

“I’ve already read up on the law for your case, Billy Means,” he said, “because if ever I’m called upon to defend you I know it will be on a charge of making mean whisky, and selling it for two prices, somewhere out in the mountains.”

The crowd burst into a roar of laughter, and the big mountaineer tried to hide himself, calico suit, glass buttons and all, behind the throng.

“An’ what would you defend me for, Judge Braxton, if I’d happen to call on you?” said a little yellow-faced, mean-eyed man.

“I wouldn’t defend you at all, Tom Gasson,” replied Judge Braxton, giving him a look of withering contempt, “because I never take the case of a man whom I know to be guilty.”

Again the crowd burst into loud laughter, and this time it contained mingled notes of derision and satisfaction. The yellow-faced man slunk quickly away. Tom Gasson was suspected of shooting his neighbor’s stock, than which there is no meaner crime in the Kentucky mountains, and he was known to be a scoundrel.

“I’m glad you gave him that shot. He deserved it,” said Conroy, the storekeeper, to Judge Braxton.

“How much does he owe you, Jim?” asked the judge.

For a third time the crowd burst into a roar of laughter, and as on the first occasion, the laugh was now thoroughly good-natured.

Jim Conroy reddened a little, and then he joined in the laugh.

“Forty-seven dollars and sixty cents,” he replied frankly. “And I’ll tell you what I’ll do, judge—I’ll cut off the forty-seven dollars and sell the whole account to you for the sixty cents.”

The judge shook his head.

“You don’t seem to me to be an object of charity to-day, Jim,” he said, “and I need that sixty cents.”

Then the two walked on together.

“I wanted a chance to speak to you, judge,” Conroy said. “Bob Turner has heard that you’re in town, and he’s anxious to see you.”

“What good would that do?” asked the judge. He never liked to go to an accused or condemned man to whom he could carry no hope.

“I don’t know,” replied Conroy thoughtfully, “but do you know, judge, I used to like Bob Turner? Of course he killed that man, and I s’pose he ought to hang for it, but I hate to see a fellow have to shuffle out of this world with ten thousand people watching him do it.”

“I don’t mean to see it,” said Judge Braxton emphatically.

“But you’ll see Bob Turner before he goes, won’t you?” continued Conroy. “I think it would be a real act of charity to strengthen him to face the crowd and the rope.”

“Do you think so, Jim?” asked the judge earnestly.

“I know it would,” replied the storekeeper with conviction. “I was in there myself at daylight to tell him good-by—as I told you, I like Bob—and he was asking hard for you. It’ll be a good deed, judge, to see him.”

“Very well,” replied Judge Braxton. “I’ll see him.” He could not resist such an appeal.

As he continued his walk up the street toward the jail he recalled Turner’s trial. He had been present a year before at a session of the circuit court in Shadwell when it occurred, and he had noted at the time how the defense had been mismanaged by a young and not very bright attorney. The judge, with his wonderful eye for weak points in the attack, had longed more than once to show them to Turner’s lawyer, but he was not a man to meddle in business that was not his own. Turner had been found guilty, had been condemned to death, and the Court of Appeals had denied a new trial.

“If I’d been in the case I’d have shattered the prosecution,” thought Judge Braxton. “What excuse can there be for a lawyer who muddles his defense when his client’s life is at stake!”

He came to the jail, the only building in the place not of wood. It looked gloomy enough, with heavy iron bars across the windows and two deputies, rifle in hand, on guard before the door. Already hundreds of spectators hung about, watching the walls that held the doomed man, and the judge was forced to press his way through a dense group before the entrance.

One of those whom he touched, a woman, turned and looked at him. It was a fierce old mountain face that gazed at him from under the sunbonnet, lean and wrinkled, black eyes burning, and thin gray locks falling on her brown forehead.

The judge started and suddenly wished himself in some other place. It was Bob Turner’s mother!

He was so used to appeals for help that he thought she was going to cry out to him to save her son; but she said nothing, merely kept her concentrated, burning gaze upon him, and he passed uneasily on until he reached the doorstep where stood the deputies armed with rifles.

“I want to see Turner,” he said. “Jim Conroy tells me that he has asked for me.”

“That’s all right,” said the jailer, appearing at that moment in the doorway. “I was in the cell when he asked Conroy to bring you, an’ if Bob Turner, on the last mornin’ of his life, wants to see Judge Braxton he kin do it.”

The riflemen passed him in, and the judge went with the jailer to the cell.

Judge Braxton’s heart was heavy within him when he saw Bob Turner, a stalwart mountain youth, now in the last stages of despair, his healthy tan replaced by the jail pallor. He seized the judge’s two hands in his and clung to them as if here at last was a man who could save him.

“Judge,” he exclaimed, “it’s mighty good of you to come! I ain’t any coward, judge—don’t think that—an’ if I killed Jake Filkins, as they said I did, I’d go to the gallows without a whimper. But it’s awful, judge, to have to die for what you didn’t do! I say it right now, over an’ over again, that I didn’t kill Jake Filkins! Oh, judge, if I’d ’a’ had you to defend me I’d ’a’—never been here!”

“It is best to be resigned, my son,” said a voice from the dark corner of the cell.

It was the minister, Mr. Perkins, that said this. He was staying with Turner in his last hours, and would accompany him to the gallows.

“But I ain’t resigned!” exclaimed Turner with energy. “I’m an innocent man, an’ they ain’t got a right to hang me for what I never done. Can’t you do somethin’ for me yet, judge? I’ve heard talk of such things as new evidence, an” writs o’ error. Can’t you get one o’ them, judge?”

Judge Braxton slowly and sadly shook his head. The eyes of Bob Turner were honest, and he had never seen a guilty man act like this in the face of death. An able and energetic lawyer might find new evidence enough for a writ of error, but the Court of Appeals was far away in Frankfort, the nearest railway station was fifty miles distant, and it was but three hours to the hanging.

“If I could do it I would, Bob Turner,” he said impulsively, “because I believe you are innocent.”

The young man fell back in despair, and the minister began to say to him consolatory words that he did not hear. As soon as he could Judge Braxton left the cell with the jailer, both with tears in their eyes.

“If there were time, he might get a writ of error,” Judge Braxton said to the jailer as they stood a moment in the doorway behind the armed guards.

“I guess there ain’t no writ o’ error for him this side o’ t’other world,” said the jailer; “an’ he ain’t likely to need such a thing there.”

“No,” said the judge sadly, and he went out into the crowd which had now pressed up to the very door-step. A lean, fierce old face on the very fringe of it looked out at him from the absurd folds of a yellow sunbonnet. The judge’s heart sank. She had heard the words that passed between him and the jailer there, and she would have the misery of living and knowing that her son might have been saved had the right lawyer defended him.

But the mother of Bob Turner said never a word; only she stared so intently at Judge Braxton that he became nervous and bumped rather heavily against the big, square figure of a man. He drew back with a hasty apology, but the man merely said quietly: “It’s all right, jedge. I knowed ye didn’t mean to do it.”

Judge Braxton started again. The man was Big Seth Turner, Bob Turner’s oldest brother. He looked at Seth curiously, but the mountaineer looked away, and a moment later was lost in the crowd which was continually increasing in area and thickness. It was slow work making a passage through the people. Presently Judge Braxton came to a man who said to him:

“How’s he bearin’ up, jedge?”

“As well as you would in his place,” replied the judge shortly, and then looking at his questioner, he was sorry that he had given such a reply to what he had taken at first to be idle curiosity. The man was Bob Turner’s first cousin, Eli Skaggs.

“I’m glad to hear it, jedge,” said Skaggs in a low tone. “Bob’s a brave man.”

“And not a bad one,” said Judge Braxton impulsively.

“Thank ye, jedge,” answered Eli Skaggs quietly.

The judge at last made his way through the crowd and stood on the far side of the street, where a lean, hawk-nosed, little old man with singularly fierce, bright eyes, presently came and stood beside him. It was Bud Murray, the brother of Bob Turner’s mother.

“It’s like a pass’le o’ crows, jedge, chatterin’ round somethin’ dead,” said the old man in a tone that sounded like the snarl of a wildcat.

“It’s a heathenish curiosity,” said the judge, and it was on his tongue to ask the old man why he, too, had come to see his nephew die. But a sudden thought leaped to life in his mind and he refrained. Neither he nor Bud Murray spoke again, but the judge looked closely and thoughtfully over the crowd. Not far away he saw another brother of Bob Turner, and then two more uncles, and then, one by one, a dozen cousins scattered through the crowd.

Judge Braxton turned and walked very slowly down the street. His heart had been heavy with sorrow, and now his mind was heavy with thought. Naturally a man of uncommon powers, his perceptive faculties had been trained to the highest pitch by his long life in the law. Moreover, he knew thoroughly the people of his circuit, and now he had no doubt that he saw the truth.

What should he do? Judge Braxton was a man of the law, and he had a jealous regard for its fair name. What should he do? The finger of right pointed one way, and then it pointed another. Long his mind followed the pointing finger on either course, and then he made his choice. He was an outsider here. He had not interfered when the bungling young lawyer allowed the rope to knot itself around Bob Turner’s neck, and he could not seek now to interfere with the drift of circumstances.

He wiped his forehead once more with the great white handkerchief, and continued his slow walk to the little hotel at which the lawyers stopped. It was one of the hottest days ever known in Shadwell, and he was glad to get inside and drink a glass of cool lemonade. The public room was crowded and there was but one subject of talk—the hanging of Bob Turner, which was now but two hours away.

“I think you’ll be left alone here, judge, when the event comes off,” said a lawyer named Johnson. “I know you won’t go to such a thing, but I don’t know anybody else who won’t.”

“On the contrary,” replied Judge Braxton, “I am going.” The lawyer showed surprise. “I didn’t think you were willing to see a fellow human being put to death,” said Johnson.

“Just this once,” replied Judge Braxton.

Time passed rapidly; and then, as if by one impulse, all the great crowd moved toward the open fields near the jail, where the gallows had been erected. Judge Braxton went, too, and in that moment of excitement he was not noticed. He caught a glimpse of the gallows, a crude affair, but deadly enough, and he shuddered.

Then he looked away. Despite his emotion, he was watching closely. His eyes were searching for a figure, and presently he found it. Only the lean, fierce old face in the yellow sunbonnet showed above the mass, but the mother of Bob Turner was there, near the front of the crowd.

The great throng made little noise save for its heavy breathing and the tramp of many feet. It was silent with expectation. The sun, now at the zenith, poured down fiery rays, and every face was wet with perspiration. All the men were in their shirt-sleeves.

The judge brushed against a wiry old figure.

“It’s a hot day, jedge,” said Bud Murray as he passed on. The throng covered all the field except the space around the gallows, where two deputies stood guard, and the lane between the gallows and the jail.

A deep murmur ran through the crowd, and then came silence—a silence deep, intense and painful, that endured for a full five minutes, when it was broken by a sudden involuntary cry from thousands of throats:

“There he is!”

The jail door had opened, and out of it came Bob Turner, pale, but composed now. By the side of him walked the minister, Bible in hand, and on either side of the two was a deputy with a rifle. Behind them came the jailer.

The judge saw well from his point of vantage and a great lump came into the throat of the tender-hearted man. It was a bright and beautiful world, even in these stern mountains. What a terrible thing for a man to come forth from a dark jail merely to look his last upon it!

The crowd, after the single burst, became silent again. Then it pressed closer, still curious and perhaps a little awed.

Judge Braxton’s eyes searched eagerly for the absurd yellow sunbonnet, and at last he saw it at the very edge of the crowd, at the narrowest portion of the open space down which the solemn procession was passing. The yellow sun-bonnet never wavered. The old woman was at least steady.

They walked very slowly. The minister was speaking in a low tone, as if he would strengthen Turner, and the condemned man seemed to be listening. The judge could count their footsteps, and never before in his life had time seemed to drag so heavily. The brilliant sun blazed down upon the multitude and brought out every curious face like carving.

Presently the grim procession came to the point at which the unwavering yellow sunbonnet, near the front of the crowd, showed to Judge Braxton. And then the heavy, ominous silence was broken by a sharp, piercing cry that cut the air like the slash of a knife.

No two accounts of what followed have ever agreed, but to Judge Braxton it seemed that a body of at least twenty men was suddenly detached from the rest of the crowd and hurled in one mass upon the prisoner and those around him. The deputies and the jailer were seized in powerful arms and their weapons wrenched from them.

Shouts and the sound of struggling followed, the entire multitude, driven by curiosity, closed in, and a cloud of dust raised by the rush of thousands of feet rose above them all.

Amid the cries and confusion nothing more was known for several minutes. Then some one shouted in a tremendous voice, “Look!” and pointed to the mountainside.

Bob Turner, on a great black horse, waved his hands once toward them and then galloped away in the forest.

“Ye’ll git that writ o’ error yet an’ clear him, won’t you, Judge Braxton?” whispered Bob Turner’s lean, fierce tiger-cat of an old mother in the judge’s ear.

“I will,” said Judge Braxton. And he did.

▲